A long time ago, Hg recommended a book called Skating To Antarctica, by Jenny Diski to me, but I never got around to reading it. Then a few weeks ago I was visiting Bristol, and came across a bookstall of some sort, run by earnest people, so it must have been for anti-vivisection purposes or something. Anyway, that’s beside the point. One of the books was Nothing Natural, by Jenny Diski; being a cat of excellent memory [in fact, a mind like a steel trap, as has been remarked], I remembered the recommendation, and purchased it for £1.

And that’s how I ended up reading a kinky novel on the train to work every day this week.

Now, I don’t know whether I should consider myself to be well-read in this genre, but it did seem to be an intellectual cut above your Anne Rice nonsense, so that was a good start. Another book it called to mind was Killing Me Softly, by Nicci French, although Ms Diski writes about the dynamic of a sadomasochistic relationship with more authority and less sugar coating than Ms French. Of course both the main characters are screwed-up bundles of issues, but that’s what unnatural desires are made of, isn’t it?

The story, in brief, is the tale of Rachel, a hardass single mother, with the emphasis on single, and Joshua, a Bad Man. They meet infrequently, at her flat, where he tortures her mentally and physically, and they both enjoy it. In a subplot, Rachel teaches a disadvantaged teenager, who is treated badly by the authorities who are supposed to care for him. When this comes to a bad end, she suffers from a severe bout of the depression to which she is prone; and although I have never experienced depression, I would think that this is more than just a sketch of how it feels to be chronically suicidal. Meanwhile, we are wondering whether Joshua could indeed be the sadistic rapist of whom Rachel has seen an accurate photofit sketch in the papers; she certainly believes him to be capable of losing control of his fantasies.

In an afterword, the author claims that the book is about honesty in relationships, and this is certainly a strong theme. It is also about power in relationships, and about people who appear to be totally self-sufficient but are usually hurt or confused on the inside. Initially, literary feminists applauded this novel, because although the heroine is initially portrayed as a weak and pathetic betrayer of the female race, in her enjoyment of pain and humiliation, she does eventually get revenge. the story of a single parent locked in an abusive relationship“>This review seems to miss the point quite nicely. According to the afterword, when Diski pointed out that they had completely misunderstood her intentions, which were to show the heroine losing her grip on reality in the end, feminist bookshops refused to stock it. Fortunately it’s still available in mainstream bookstores, where no political points need be made, only amazon points.

For me, the novel is not flawless, but is darkly gripping. The writing style is too like my own fiction style [as opposed to blog style, which I prefer, but try as I might, I cannot produce fiction in this same style, meh], and as such I consider it to be slightly clunking prose, a little bit trying-too-hard. At the point where Rachel’s depression hits, the novel becomes very bleak, but you’re right there with her, wanting something external to make it all better, just as she does; or desperate for her to pull herself out of it, but understanding that that’s really not how depression works.

4/5

And particularly as someone recently mentioned how cunnngly guarded we are here at Casa Uborka, this seems like a good one to do; via Pix. It’s a bit of a stretch for the old memory cells, though.
Ten years ago I lived in Plymouth and worked for a company called Milk Marque. I was a few months away from getting married, and deeply involved in lots of lovely, lovely planning. We had found a really nice house with views of Plymouth Sound, but our moving date kept getting put back for random reasons like the vendor’s wife committing suicide by setting herself on fire.
Five years ago I lived in Worcester and worked for a chemical company that paid me an impressive amount of money to do very little; I found it boring but it hadn’t yet occurred to us to move to Hungary. I was a few months away from getting married, but certainly hadn’t started planning it by that point. Life was built on a solid foundation of routine, two cats, and a great deal of alcohol.
One year ago I had been living with Pete for three months, and was doing what I considered to be a dream job as an ISO 9000 consultant [yes I’m a bit strange]. Pete and I had just got back from a week in the Lake District; we had not had any serious conversations about getting married.
Yesterday was a busy day at work, now that I’m past my 60-day probation period with the factory monitoring company and my boss seems to trust me to get things done. Around this time, we had just put the phone down from our weekly conference call with the NJ and LA offices, during which the americans had been louder than usual, and I had only made two remarks about tea. I haven’t broken it to them yet that I’ve given up tea; how would they classify me, then?
Today I have the day off, but Pete wouldn’t let me enjoy my lie in and made me get up at the same time as him. I wasted the morning on the computer (but managed not to check my work email), then went out for lunch with a friend and former colleague (from the dream job). When I got back I cleaned the oven and slept off the glass of wine. Shame Wimbledon’s been rained off and it’s too drizzly to spend the evening outside a nice pub somewhere.
Next week I’m going to China.

31. Here’s what I thought about The Hours, by Michael Cunningham:
Really, it was fairly dull. I found it hard work for the first few chapters, but as you all know, I never ever give up [unless it’s some awful book set in Aberystwyth], because there’s always a chance that the story will somehow redeem itself. Frankly, The Hours never does pay its debt to the persistent reader.
The reviewer is probably supposed to refer to the profound and wistful atmosphere, but who cares? I mean, really, what about it? Sometimes books that are supposed to be deep and clever are just too damn contrived to work, and this is one of them. Meh. Intellectual blah. If this book was a person, it would be reclining on a sofa with a pale hand to its brow, and I would be wishing it would take a paracetamol and stop whining.
It ends in what might be intended to be a twist, but was in fact an unremarkable effort to tie up some ends that weren’t particularly loose anyway.
There you go: Karen reads the books so that you don’t have to.
3/5