Books

  • Books

    Review: Love Transcends in The Last Hours in Paris

    The Last Hours in Paris book by Ruth Druart

    ‘To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.’

    Victor Hugo

    Around 200,000 children were born between 1941 and 1945 as a result of liaisons between French women and occupying German troops.

    This phenomenon is the starting point for Ruth Druart’s second novel – The Last Hours In Paris, set during the Nazi occupation of France. German translator Sebastian falls in love with Élise, a young Parisian woman who has been trying to help Jewish orphans escape deportation. Here Druart asks questions not often considered in WW2 literature. How far were the occupying Germans victims themselves? What were their attitudes towards the locals? And what was the fate of the women who ‘liaised’ with them?

  • Books,  Film

    Guillermo del Toro – New Book Looks Inside the Mind of a Legendary Director

    James Jean artwork for The Shape of Water
    Artwork by James Jean, created for the launch of The Shape of Water

    Dark fairy tales, gothic horror, amphibious love stories and Spanish Civil War history – surely no other director has spanned quite so many genres while achieving this level of critical success. A fan since Pan’s Labyrinth, I was thrilled to read a new, in-depth look at the work of visionary auteur Guillermo del Toro.

    Empire magazine film critic Ian Nathan explores Del Toro’s early years in Mexico and his beginnings in special effects, before looking at each of his films in detail. From his debut vampire fable Cronos and the chilling Devil’s Backbone, to the dark allegory of Pan’s Labyrinth, gothic romance of Crimson Peak, Oscars smash The Shape of Water and everything in between.

  • Books

    REVIEW: A Portrait of the Witch – Taschen’s New Art History of Witchcraft

    Witches' Sabbath Francisco Goya painting
    Witches’ Sabbath – Francisco Goya

    To most people, the word ‘witch’ conjures images of old crones with pointy hats flying into the moonlight on broomsticks. Outsiders in league with malevolent forces, they cast spells on those who wrong them. Our current perceptions of witches and witchcraft are still largely shaped by the propaganda cooked up by King James I in the 1590s, memorialised by Shakespeare in the witches of Macbeth.

    With ‘Witchcraft,’ a new coffee table tome published by Taschen, co-editors Jessica Hundley and Pam Grossman have gone a long way towards changing this perception. From the origins of the word ‘witch’ to the practices of witches today, they chart the history of witchcraft across the world through over 400 artworks, as well as essays and interviews with historians, artists and modern practitioners.

  • Books

    Review: Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson

    Published earlier this month, Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson has been universally praised. In this debut novel we follow a day in the life of a young woman who works in a mundane office job. We’re in her head from the moment she wakes up, to the moment she drops off to sleep.

    She’s extremely self-conscious, suffering ever-present anxiety and impulses to self-harm, troubled by a recent trauma. The memories often break through, but of course she hasn’t the time (or possibly the inclination) to fully process the experience. She is assaulted by constant distractions – email, WhatsApp, Twitter and colleagues making small talk, but those intrusive, traumatic thoughts are always there under the surface.

  • Books

    Review: While Paris Slept by Ruth Druart

    A young woman’s future is torn away in a heartbeat. Herded on to a train bound for Auschwitz, in an act of desperation she entrusts her most precious possession to a stranger. All she has left now is hope.

    Author Ruth Druart moved to Paris in 1993. While walking around the city when she first moved there, she was moved by the plaques and monuments to those killed during World War II. Outside a school in Le Marais, she noticed a simple plaque telling of the 260 pupils who were detained by the Nazis during the war. This inspired her to learn more about the German occupation of France.

  • Books

    Antkind: Charlie Kaufman Kills the Inner Critic

    Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has described his debut novel Antkind as his ‘big book of jokes’, but of course it’s much more than that.

    Primarily it seems to be a device for him to torture a film critic of his own making – named B. Rosenberger Rosenberg. This irredeemable character has all the cliché character flaws you might expect in a film critic – he’s pompous, self-aggrandising, and almost completely lacking any self-awareness.

  • Books

    Review: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda

    Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda book cover

    Remember when every party seemed to be a Great Gatsby theme party? While many people will be aware of the glitz and glamour that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda enjoyed, fewer will know of the heartbreak and tragedy that followed.

    I revisited Fitzgerald’s work after watching Z: The Beginning of Everything, which tells the story of how the couple met and their early life together from Zelda’s perspective.  I went on to read The Beautiful and the Damned, which is Scott’s thinly veiled autobiography chronicling the early, hedonistic years of their marriage. The pair reel from champagne fuelled chaos to the trials of domestic life, keeping their heads above water between riotous parties and raising a young child.

    I then skipped to Tender is the Night, in which Scott undertakes a much more complex narrative that he laboured over with agonised rewrites. This novel covers their time living in France, socialising with the greatest talents of the 1920’s artistic community– Hemingway, Picasso, Matisse and Gertrude Stein. During this period Scott’s relationship with alcohol becomes much more problematic, his behaviour ever more erratic and distressing for everyone involved. Their friends Sara and Gerald Murphy on the other hand, through Scott’s lens, seem to have cracked the code for living a beautiful and fulfilled life – ‘la belle vie.’  Wanting to know more about the people behind the literary façade, I read the fittingly titled New Yorker article ‘Living Well is the Best Revenge.’ A fascinating (but very long) read, the article uncovers the Murphies’ own perspective on their relationship with the Fitzgeralds and this time in France.

    It was in France that their marriage began to break down. Zelda became obsessed with ballet, taking lessons with the great Russian ballerina Lubov Egorova and dancing obsessively eight hours a day. She became physically and mentally exhausted, was eventually diagnosed as a schizophrenic and admitted to a psychiatric facility. She would spend the rest of her life in and out of these facilities and they would never live together for any extended period again. Scott’s own crisis would be explored in his three deeply personal essays – The Crack-Up, Pasting it Together and Handle with Care, as he began to lose confidence in his abilities and market worth.

    This brings us, finally, to Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. This definitive collection of their letters to each other spans from their initial meeting up to Scott’s death in 1940, from a heart attack at the age of 44. There may have been infidelities on both sides, but their deep and enduring love for each other is apparent all the way through these letters. Scott never abandoned Zelda, in fact he constantly fretted over her care and wellbeing.

    While they were known for flashing the cash in the early days, it becomes apparent that money was a constant worry for Scott as he tried to ensure that his daughter had the best possible education and his wife received the best care. He would be frustrated with Zelda’s frivolous spending habits, but also understood she had a very active mind that needed stimulation with artistic pursuits such as painting while held captive in an institution.

    In one exchange Scott becomes exasperated that Zelda has beaten him to the pass with the completion of her novel on the same period of their lives that Tender is the Night covered. Save Me the Waltz was dashed off in a matter of months while she was reposing in hospital; Scott laboured over his novel for years while trying to pay the bills. We are lucky this extraordinary couple left so much behind – their charm, wit and charisma is brought back immediately to life through these letters.

    There has been much debate over the years on who stifled whose creativity or even who ruined who. Scott didn’t have much faith that Zelda would become a prima ballerina while pushing thirty, and she became something of a burden as he tried to realise his literary potential while raising their child.  What did become clear, however, was that there would be no F. Scott Fitzgerald without Zelda Sayre – their life together was his greatest inspiration and Zelda his greatest muse.

    Eight years after Scott’s death, Zelda died even more tragically in a fire at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Survived by their daughter Scottie, they were buried together. The final, immortal words of The Great Gatsby can be found inscribed on their tombstone: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

    I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.
    – F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • Books

    Review: The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

    Forty Rules of Love book cover

    Elif Shafak is a prolific and internationally renowned British-Turkish author. Her most recent novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, was nominated for the 2019 Booker Prize.

    Shifting between the present day and 13th century Konya, The Forty Rules of Love explores the relationship between the wandering Sufi mystic Shams of Tabriz and the now more widely known Persian poet Rumi. After his death, Rumi’s followers founded the Mevlevi Sufi Order, also known as the ‘whirling dervishes’.

    In this novel, Shafak chronicles Rumi’s life-changing transformation into a mystic and poet through his close relationship with Shams. This is framed by the eponymous ‘Forty Rules’ created by Shams – profound ruminations on the nature of life, love and our connection to God. One such rule is particularly relevant to the nature of their relationship: “Eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.”

    To make this story more relatable to our everyday lives, Shafak brings us back to the present day through the character of Ella, a dissatisfied housewife looking for deeper meaning in life and love. For me, this element was unnecessary as I found myself completely transported by the history and mysticism explored in the main story.

    For anyone interested in finding out more about Rumi and Sufism, I would recommend this as a good starting point.

    “You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for him: in the heart of a true lover.”


  • Books

    Review: Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

    Birds Without Wings book cover

    As it says on the cover, this book truly is a masterpiece. Birds Without Wings is an incredibly insightful and well researched piece of wartime history, shining a light on the customs and daily life of people in Greece and Turkey during the early twentieth century. De Bernières captures the foibles and the beauty of the human condition from birth to life and in death. Some of the passages were so moving they brought me to tears. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the great Turkish leader Ataturk, this period of history and the culture of Greece and Turkey during this time. Even if you have no knowledge of this time or region, it will resonate with anyone simply interested in what it means to be human.