Homecoming celebration: international giveaway of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Some of you may recall that the Business School Wives Book Club enjoyed a Rebecca-fest some time ago. For newer visitors to this blog suffice to say, that I think it is a super book. For my ruminations on the subject in full, please click here.

The Business School Wives Book Club has now sadly dispersed and is no more. For reasons which I am not clear on and which no doubt have something to do with “high mobility living”, I find that I have rocked up back in the UK with two copies of Rebecca... which is one more than anyone needs.

So, there is a lovely, almost new edition of this classic novel up for grabs. All you need to do is leave a comment. I will then draw a name from a hat (or cup or bowl or other receptacle) at random. The party is open to everyone, so do not worry about where you live.

Bon weekend!

The Business School Wives Book Club: Part Six (America in Europe)

Some Book Club meetings are easier to cater for than others. When we discussed Three Cups of Tea we did so over delicious Pakistani snacks, and for our Rebecca meeting, I baked a tray of scones. But our discussion of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway was the winner in terms of feasting. We sat down to acres of tapas – with olives and cheeses and dates wrapped in ham and baked peppers and all sorts of lovely things. There was also plenty of red wine – although probably not quite as much as is consumed in the book.

The Sun Also Rises was Hemmingway’s first successful novel and it is short and sad. The narrator of the story is the hard drinking, eternally frustrated Jake Barnes and his subjects are his fellow American ex-patriots living in Paris in the 1920s. They seem to drift around the city in loose formation, drinking, talking about drinking, having romances and waiting for their money to show up from home. Jake homes in on a handful of characters in particular. He introduces us to Robert, an emotionally pathetic ex-pat novelist with a boxing background and an inferiority complex. Then there is Michael, a hard drinking, heavy spending guy who has to share his fiancée with every other man who comes along. The jewel of the novel is Brett, a woman of beauty, daring and staggering abandon, who everyone else is in love with. Most of all, Jake homes in on his own character; his visceral but unfulfillable love for Brett; his status as a member of a lost generation; his anti-Semitism; his need to be at the centre of things. This rag-tag band of souls leaves their makeshift homes in Paris and head south for Spain to see the fiesta. There, before the spectacle of the bullfight, Brett’s sensuous impulses and the groups’ collective tolerance will be tested to their limits.

Hemmingway’s writing is often imitated but seldom well. At its best it is an adjective-free series of clipped, masculine statements that builds up an emotionally convincing narrative – made clearer for all the things left unsaid. If you are a reader who likes flowers with your prose, this may not be for you. It is minimalist and unfussy. Because the language is cut down the symbols in the story become supremely important.

Jake and Brett make the central symbol. She is a woman who is literally addicted to sex. Hemmingway does not tell us why, he leaves us to wonder – but what ever the reason, if a man shows the least interest in her (and they usually do), then there is no stopping Brett. The man who loves her most however is Jake and he is impotent and can never give her what she wants. Jake is one of that small band of much pitied soldiers who were injured in World War 1 and never made love again. Together, Jake and Brett symbolise the so-called “lost generation” that Hemmingway was a part of. These were the people who lived most of their adulthood in the shadow of the First World War – and for whom there was no chance of innocence. Although both Jake and Brett want happiness, they are irreconcilable. Their love, which might have worked out in another corner of history is drained of joy and morality.

I loved it. I thought it was a moving and authentic read with real people and real disasters. I don’t know that I cared too much for the characters. I liked the self-knowing realism of Jake, but his pals were pretty charmless. Brett was the kind of character who was interesting because of the way she lived rather than anything she said. In fact, her conversation in the novel was almost entirely dominated by references to being “tight”. The Sun Also Rises is a novel that does a good job of dividing people. There are excellent and various bloggy opinions available from Mrs B at The Literary Stew, Gary at How Books Got Their Titles, Clover at Fluttering Butterflies, ANZ Litlovers Litblog, Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli, Cody at Swann’s Thoughts, Linda at The Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project, For Comrades and Lovers and Ed Gorman.

I have found a picture of Hemmingway and since I learned from Gary at How Books Got Their Titles that Brett Ashley was modelled on Lady Duff Twysden I have also included a picture of her sitting alongside Hemmingway and friends in Paris. There are also a couple of shots of the 1957 film with Ava Gardner, hmmm; I feel a Book Club movie night coming on.

The Business School Wives Book Club: Part 5 (Russia)

G. K. Chesterton’s 1912 novella Manalive is, without question, a bit of an odd one. If you are wondering how it came to be selected for the Russian instalment of the Business School Wives Book Club, then I must say that initially, I shared your confusion. It turns out that in one of those flukes of the international book market, the quirky mysteries of English eccentric G. K. Chesterton have quite a following in Russia.

The setting for the story is however, a long way from Moscow. It is a bleak London guesthouse where a range of long term tenants are collectively miserable and directionless. A man, who is identified as one Innocent Smith appears in the garden, accompanied by a great wind. Within pages of his entry, he has induced declarations of love between other tenants, set up an autonomous High Court to deal with the business of the house and arranged to elope with the young companion of one of the house’s inmates. Happiness appears to explode over the house and the jaded and misanthropic feelings of the past are no more. Needless, to say, the story does not end there. Before long two doctors arrive with accusations against “Innocent” Smith that would make anyone raise an eye. Burglary; Desertion of Wife; Bigamy; Attempted murder: the man’s crimes appear to be legion. Is he mad or is he dangerous or is there a mysterious method in his history?

This was not the easiest of book club books to get into. It is a little heavy going due to the language and it is not always simple to work out who is speaking at any one time. It is however, quite funny and deals surprisingly and with a certain surrealistic sanity with the human need for happiness and contentment. What is even better, it can be read online here.

Although it was not a favourite read, the ruminations of one of its female characters on what makes the ideal man spawned a classic book club discussion. It seemed to us that GKC’s message was that to be happy one ought to choose a man with a hobby (however strange, and goodness me, you will find that Innocent Smith’s are strange) so that he isn’t forever hanging around the house. Encouraging.

I spot of googling has uncovered the exciting additional news that there is a film adaptation in postproduction. The latest is here. From the Business School Wives Book Club, goodbye for now.

The Business School Wives Book Club – Part Four (India)

When it comes to the great Anglo-Indian novel, I have to put my hand up and say that I am a fan. I love A Passage to India and all four books of the Raj Quartet. In fact, I even own the complete DVD box set of the 1980s classic TV serial The Jewel in the Crown. But then I am British, so maybe it is only natural that I should buy into a romantic idea of India – a literary notion of a country that is hopelessly outdated and was never quite true in the first place.

India’s representative in the Business School Wives Book Club must have faced quite a dilemma. Does she choose a book that conforms to the pattern set by the sweeping, cinematic novels of the past? Does she choose something that represents India today? And if she chooses the latter – which India should be represented for there are many Indias and not all of them can be distilled within the covers of a single book. Quite rightly she chose to introduce a book which is extremely popular in the India of today and which represents accurately an iconic corner of modern Indian life. So it was that we came to be reading Five Point Somebody by Chetan Bhagat.

Five Point Somebody is a short and easy read which accompanies three hapless mechanical engineering students at the Institute of Information Technology in Delhi – an institution so famous in India that in the book it is invariably referred to simply as IIT. IIT is shorthand for the iconic universities in India which are effectively regarded as gateways for their students into the economy. A good degree from IIT basically assures the holder of a job in a fiercely competitive market. The heroes of Five Point Somebody however, are not ideal students. Our narrator Hari and his two friends Ryan and Alok are pretty near the bottom of the class. Their natural lack of genius is compounded by lack of application, personal distractions and downright stupidity. This book tells the tale of their IIT years – and the myriad scrapes that they get themselves into before finally getting out. If you want to know whether they get out with degrees, you will have to have a read yourself.

This is not a brilliant book in a literary sense. It is written in an extremely straightforward way but it is not spare or particularly moving. In many respects its resolution is a little trite and unbelievable. However, it is short, fast moving and it can be funny. What is more, despite its shortcomings – it was a perfect choice for the Business School Wives Book Club for two main reasons.

Firstly it is an authentic view of modern middle class India. You know how people say of Jane Austen that her novels are like “six inches of ivory” – that is they show a tiny section of a society at a certain point in time, but show it in its true colour as it was? Well, I think that Chetan Bhagat does something similar here. In his jokey way he criticises an education system that crushes creativity, he shows the colossal pressure that economic desperation can bring to young and old shoulders. The society that he represents is deeply stratified, desperate for success and in many respects lacking in compassion.

Secondly, given that all of our husbands are at Business School, Five Point Somebody has been a much welcome window onto the world of “GPAs” (Grade Point Averages – the marking system) and the relentless competition that accompanies international business of any flavour. This is a world where a few marks here and there could change a person’s income for the rest of their life. It is a little scary, but on the other hand, it is also a realistic representation of a lot of lives, so thank you Business School Wives Book Club for yet another eye opener.

The Business School Wives Book Club – Part Three (England)

There were times when I had my doubts about whether I was right to propose Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca as my and England’s contribution to the Business School Wives Book Club. Maybe you actually had to be a repressed English woman with a fetish for cardigans and a longing for Cornwall to appreciate this book? Maybe my international reading ladies would turn away in distain and incomprehension from this haunting and rather strange vision of the English male.... Maybe also the novel’s presentation of the English female is rather polarised, rather introverted – and completely wide of the mark.

You have probably all guessed that I was, as usual, worrying needlessly. The first clue came when one of our number accosted me the day after I gave her the book to say that she had sat up reading until four in the morning and that since then she had watched the Hitchcock film on the internet. The mood at yesterday’s meeting was very much of the “I couldn’t put it down variety” and tonight we are meeting again to watch the film together – so conscience saved.

For those of you who have not read the book – this review does not contain spoilers, so you can carry on reading. Rebecca is the story of a nameless girl, her strange marriage to an older widower, her discomforting command of a grand house and the overshadowing of her life and loves by another woman. The action of the book opens with our heroine and narrator living the life of a paid companion to a social climbing bore in Monte Carlo. She is a shy and self-conscious girl who is horrified by the vulgarity of her employer, and only too pleased to meet the enigmatic widower, Maxim de Winter with whom she immediately connects. Maxim is twenty years the senior of his new friend and he is a man with a myth. He is the wealthy master of a house, legendary for its grandeur and beauty – Manderley in the heart of Cornwall. He is also recently widowed – his late wife Rebecca, famed for her staggering beauty and charm, having been drowned in a boating accident. In person, he is not charmless, but he is cold, taciturn and clearly keeping much from our narrator. A short romance is followed by a swift wedding and the inevitable return of Mr and the new Mrs de Winter to Manderley.

Here, our narrator will struggle with her new role, appearing to be more of a servant than a mistress, more of a pet than a wife, more of a backcloth than a character. More than anything she will come to be tormented by the spectre of her deceased predecessor Rebecca, convinced that she can never compete with her, never expunge her memory from the house or its inhabitants, and consequently, never be happy. But Manderley is a house within which there are many dark secrets and unexpected turns. The last third of the book is a thrilling tale of revenge and recrimination – a kaleidoscope of reality and mythology – a bearing of souls that will lead to a new, and altogether different love story.

I have called our nameless narrator the heroine, as for me, that is what she is. With her endless struggles, her self-knowing eagerness to please and the unfairness of her position, she rather stole my heart. That is not to say that she does that to everyone. She has an almost total lack of natural authority and her shyness can be infuriating. She does not seem to be armed with the worldly wisdom or the cynicism that she so badly needs. In this, as in everything, she contrasts sharply with the memory of Rebecca. Beautiful, assertive, defiant, imaginative, Rebecca was a perfect chatelaine who seems, through the dark glass of memory to have held effortless superiority and charm in perfect balance. Du Maurier presents these two visions of womanhood – one bright, the other apparently, pale, and the reader will inevitably choose between them.

I have included a few stills from the various dramatisations of this wonderful novel. For Rebecca-aholics I recommend the reviews of Fanoosh at Prolific Living in a Perfectly Ordinary World, Andreea at Passionate Booklover, Amy at My Friend Amy, Trish at Trish’s Reading Nook, Casey the Bookish Type and Jackie at Farm Lane Books Books Blog (warning: spoiler): all excellent reviews with different points of view.

The Business School Wives Book Club Part Two (Pakistan)

You find me sitting in my study, drinking coffee and reflecting on how much I enjoyed yesterday’s meeting of book club. If you are new to my blog – I belong to a book club of international ladies who have been thrown together in a small town outside Paris – and whose aim is to share and discuss literature originating from, reflective of or in some sense connected with our home country. This week was the turn of Pakistan and the book in the spotlight was the bestseller “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

Three Cups of Tea has left a real mark on me. I find myself thinking about it at the petrol station and in the supermarket queue. I especially find myself thinking of it when I look at my huge collection of books – some read, some deserted mid-read, some on the increasingly ferocious “tbr” pile. I guess the point is that I can read them and I cannot imagine my life without literacy. Three Cups of Tea is not a work of great literature. David Oliver Relin’s writing is journalistic and although he builds suspense and character and keeps the momentum– the quality of the writing feels passable rather than good. What keeps this book afloat, what keeps it with its reader long after it is finished is the story itself – staggering, inspiring, brave – and true.

Three Cups of Tea is the story of Greg Mortenson and his mission to promote peace literacy and understanding in the northern areas of Pakistan. Mortenson begins the book as a trained nurse whose real passion is mountaineering. When his younger sister dies he attempts to climb the forbidding summit K2 in her memory. Extreme conditions, bad luck and dehydration get the better of him and freezing and exhausted he wanders into the remote Baltistan village of Korphe where he is shown kindness and generosity which will change his life and the lives of others for ever. After a long sleep and quite a few cups of tea Mortenson discovers to his horror that Korphe does not have a school. He promises that he will come back and build them one. So begins a epic story of one man, his overwhelming determination to help others, the strange paths of charity, the anatomy of trust and the perils of misunderstanding. There will be dangers and sorrows – there will be fatwas and kidnappings and attacks and even an impromptu (although not entirely consensual) party with the Taliban. Out of this landscape of fear and violence emerge many schools and many literate children.

It is a poignant moment in the narrative when Mortenson’s mentor – and the chief of Korphe village admits to the American his “greatest sadness” - that he cannot read. The urge to be educated is as powerful in the older generation who have lost out as it is in the younger generation who know that they have a chance. The physical privations of these people who live in huts and stay warm by the heat of Yak dung fires are shocking to the western mind. So much so, that their humanity and eagerness to learn in turn are also surprising – but then this is a book with which to challenge your preconceptions, not reinforce them.

It is impossible to overstate how unusual a person Greg Mortenson is. When his humanitarian spirit takes him away from his wife and child for months at a time and into the teeth of danger on the other side of the world – I do find it hard to relate to him. My conclusion is that if that kind of drive didn’t exist then nothing that was difficult would ever get done and sometimes, the better part of valour is putting incomprehension aside and accepting that all people don’t think alike. What is a real pleasure is watching Mortenson’s development from an enthusiastic bull in a china shop to a seasoned fundraiser, project manager and emissary. He is a good judge of character and knows when to lead and when to be tutored – but at the beginning of his mission he is too impatient and dismissive of the customs of Baltistan. Soon he learns that in order to succeed, and in order to truly cross the cultural boundary, he must make time to share three cups of tea.

The schools are built and the children are taught against an increasingly bloody background. The Taliban are on the rise and soon the news that “a village called New York has been bombed” will change everything. Mortenson’s schools – in which students, teachers and villagers remain committed to education in the worst of circumstances, are a fascinating window onto our recent history. Three Cups of Tea is an inspiring read – a lesson in what can be achieved when people from different cultures work together for peace and progress.

The Business School Wives Book Club: Part One (America)

My husband took one look at Jay McInerney’s “How It Ended” and said “that looks awful”. I have to admit that I was inclined to agree. Maybe it was the picture of an electric blue swimming pool on the front cover. Or maybe it was the following words on the back that really turned me off: “A transsexual prostitute accidentally propositions his own father; Two young lovers spend Christmas together high on different drugs”. It looked to me to be the kind of book that bends over backwards to be controversial and that ultimately was unlikely to be my cup of Darjeeling.

But then the Business School Wives Book Club is not a place where you get to re read your old favourites over a glass of Chablis. The members of our club are the bookworm wives of MBA students at an international business school and as a result of that we are drawn from all corners of the globe. We have an American, an Indian, a Romanian, a Russian, a Japanese, a Pakistani and I am British. Our challenge, should we chose to accept it is to introduce to the group a book that in some sense represents the culture of our home.

And so that is how it came to pass that America was represented by the collection of short stories “How It Ended”. The focus of these stories is the underbelly of modern urban life in the states. Their narrators are the excluded, the dispossessed and the disillusioned. Most have brushed fame or notoriety and retreated into the hinterland between being a “somebody” and being a “nobody”. The “Big Guy”: fat, vulgar and corrupt is a character that stands tall in these stories and he is mocked as much as he is acknowledged as the victor of the urban underworld. He stands in contrast to the neglected guy, the guy who got stepped over, the guy who is never going to “make it”. This is a world of loneliness and falsehood and envy. Everybody here has a history and yet everyone is also anonymous, the city being the best place to transform a tired middle class life into a subversive one. McInerney captures the sprawl of the city with just a few words. He focuses in on the individual soul just as easily.

The quality of the writing is absolutely excellent. The language is taut, sardonic and spare. He manages in a few pages to deliver an electrifying sense of time and place and his use of the first person narrative is extremely powerful. It enables him to build a profound intimacy between the reader and the central character of each story. It is as though you the reader, are actually there, taking the drugs and the bribes and disguising your true identity with the rest of them. You as the reader will find yourself living a lie, consorting with prostitutes, sex addicted senators and convicts – there is no end to the reinvention.

So, I guess that I was wrong on the “awful” assumption. I thought that these stories were excellent. Now that I have completed my brush with the metropolitan grotesque I have two criticisms. The first is that whilst the male characters are masterfully developed, the females are generally two dimensional dolly birds who are simply foils for their men folk. The women do not feel “real” and this lets the stories down. Secondly, McInerney is something of a one trick pony. These stories are great, but they are all the same. So much so, that they can begin to feel rather formulaic. This may be a result of the limiting format of the short story and so, surprised though I am to be writing this: I think I will give McInerney the benefit of the doubt and try one of his novels.