Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life | Amy Key | Book Review | Vintage

 

Is Arrangements in Blue a memoir? Is it poetry? Is it a free-flowing meditation? Perhaps all of those, and none. Using Joni Mitchell's album, Blue, as her starting point, Amy Key opens up her heart and mind about what life feels like when romantic love has eluded you. The gushing reviews on the cover suggest a seismic shift in modern-day thinking about romance; a book that will resonate, no question. I would argue that they hinder the beauty and art of this hard-to-classify book.

It's not what I expected, but perhaps I wasn't sure what I expected anyway. I am not single, yet this book called to me: maybe because I was instantly drawn to Amy's courage to open up in this way. Arrangements in Blue is no manifesto: what it is instead, thankfully, is a brutally honest exploration of one person's innermost life – a license to spend time inside someone's head. That this person is Amy Key is lucky for all involved, because her thoughts are elaborate, honest, personal and curious. I revel in the fact that the book has no obvious structure: it is loosely centred around a certain theme in each chapter (more precisely, a lyric from Blue) but they all read like streams of consciousness, freely following each line of thought, wherever it may lead. It's the type of book one genuinely needs to get lost in, give over the controls to the author. I did so with pleasure.

Amy recounts, in uniquely crafted language, the ups and downs of her life; romantic involvements (some harrowing, some just like any other teenage romance), friendships, loves and losses; and works through them forensically. It's a sort of evaluation, overthinking, unpacking, asking questions. But the thoughts and events that do resonate, the moments where I find the connection, are powerful. She made me remember the joy of moving into a flat by myself, making decisions and being completely in control of my happiness; but then I remember I was already buoyed by having had a couple of dates with my now-husband. To be perfectly candid, her book made me smug, and I apologise whole-heartedly. No, perhaps not smug, because it's not at the expense of anyone else that I feel this way – perhaps she just reminded me of my luck, and I'm grateful.

Is it self-indulgent? Sure. Sometimes overly so. Perhaps it could have been edited down slightly. But perhaps that's the point. Amy often takes us through her emotional cycles, feeling joy, then empathy, then suddenly anger, jealously, resentment – and it's something like that to be her reader. You cycle through emotions, most often empathising, sometimes thinking you would never do what she did, how terrible, how embarrassing. But ask yourself: wouldn't you? And if, like me, sometimes you sigh in annoyance while reading – 'get over yourself' – notice if you're talking to her, or yourself. If you wrote down your innermost thoughts for a week, a month, a year, wouldn't they look just like this?

I salute the publisher who put this book out, because it is needed in a world of polished things. It isn't a novel, it isn't a self-help book, it isn't a wildly revealing biography: it's quiet meditation on life, happiness and self-worth. And if you're anything like me, and spend at least 60% of your waking hours thinking about your worth, your future, your next steps, it'll be just as comforting to you as it was for me. This book is a companion, a friend you can sit with and have a glass of wine while ruminating.

I admire Amy's courage to put these notes out into the world. I feel it somehow creates a psychic connection with every reader so that, even though we've never all met, we feel connected somehow. 

Perhaps we should organise a big Amy Key meet-up. Imagine the buckets of tears, the empathy, the comraderie. What a world it could be.

The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore | Book Review | Granta

 

From the moment I found out about it, I knew I wanted to read The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore. It's surprising to then try and put into words why. As someone who doesn't read much fiction, when I do, I need it to be absolutely up to my high-horse standards: after all, when you read fiction, you read beautifully made-up lies. Beautifully made-up, but lies nevertheless. (Am I too negative? Perhaps.) And yet I had no doubt about it: The Manningtree Witches, Blakemore's previous novel, I found to be pretty much flawless too. 

The Glutton is a grotesque story, set in late 18th century France, where the terrors of war and economic depression influence every aspect of life, public and private. 'The price of bread rises,' chimes the menacing refrain. It's a haunting shadow throughout the book, as the plot develops, and masterfully widens the scope of its main focus – that is, Tarare: the boy with a strange name, the bastard, the great, the terrible. 

It's a tale in a tale, as dying Tarare narrates his life in the convent hospital where he came to die, to a curious nun, in the night. He is repulsive, not one bit endearing: that's what makes this an outstanding performance in the grotesque, because one's curiousity is instanly piqued. We want to know why. How. Whether. It's his story, from a violent birth through violent childhood and, to finish things off, a violent adulthood – though perhaps that's too strong a word, because the dying Tarare is only twenty-seven. The characters revolving around him are colourful and repulsive in equal measure: his salt-smuggling stepdad, his band of bandit brothers, his whore lover. 

Blakemore leans into the disgusting, seems to relish it and yet somehow that's exactly what I want her to do. It's a dirty book, sticky, slicked with grease and oil and semen, and blood, of course, a lot of it. Whether that's the blood of the animals that the Great Tarare, with his dislocated jaw, swallows up (bones and all), or the people dying like flies around him, is of no importance. She tortures her characters, and seems to delight in it – and somehow I enjoy it too. It makes one feels rotten, but also makes the reading a deliciously sick experience.

Blakemore speaks to all five senses as she conveys plot and atmosphere, and is excellent at it. Stench prevails throughout. The imagery is so vivid, yet so poetic that her style could be no-one else's. Her vocabulary is broad – to some, jarringly so, though to me doesn't feel gloating (though an LRB feature quotes ‘feculent’, ‘violaceous’, ‘sapor’, ‘asterisms’, ‘garniture’, ‘verdigris’, ‘entheogen’, ‘ectomorph’, ‘raptorine’, ‘ascarids’, ‘gleets’, ‘craquelure’, ‘priapic’ and ‘autogamous’ in one breath and yes, put like that, it does feel like a lot). I can see how this cacophony of mellifluous words, perhaps unnecessary, might annoy someone as much as it impresses me. I gather a vague sense most of the time, but I google certain words that jump out at me, not because I can't make out their meaning from the context, but because I feel she deliberately chose them, placed them with care. The least I can do, I feel, is to explore at least some of them.

It is no surprise that Blakemore has previously pubished poetry collections, because her narrative flows, convulses, expands, circles. I love her occasional use of repetition, both within a paragraph and throughout the book. It foreshadows and lends musicality to the text. By what seems like mundane repetitiveness, to me it seems she hefts gravitas onto sentences. Her craft is to be admired.

And what of the Glutton himself? Though Blakemore sometimes makes us wobble in our antipathy for Tarare, on the whole I think she wants us to dislike him. This is not a tale of understanding the misunderstood: it feels more like being one of the crowd, watching Tarare swallow leather belts and jewellery (and then some), equally repulsed and excited. I revel in it.

The only issue I have is with the novel's timing and timeline. We know, from the present-day snippets, that Tarare is twenty-seven when he dies; and we know he only spends a summer with his vagabond crew of thieves. So as I progress with the book, and find my right hand holding an increasingly thinning half, I'm worried about the ending. I do find the pacing struggles a bit – huge gaps in time with little detail, then comparatively short events before we zoom out again – but the ultimate events are harrowing enough to make the ending a relief, as I'm sure the author intended it to be.

I hope whatever comes next from Blakemore will be just as mysterious, dark and entertaining as her first two novels.

Four Mountaineering Books Everyone Should Read | Dorothy Pilley, Catherine Destivelle, Helen Mort & Alison Hargreaves | Rock Climbing Book Reviews

I want to tell you about the four mountaineering books I've read recently. This chain of events wasn't intentional, quite haphazard in fact; but the outcome, and this thread that I've followed (and can hopefully keep following) have been very satisfying indeed.

They're all about, or by, women; again, not planned, but I'm quite happy it turned out this way. They are all heroes in their own right, who broke unimaginable limits and went way beyond expectations. Whether you're a climber, hiker, walker or armchair traveller, these books, I believe, are full of inspiration and evocative landscapes that will delight you. 

I'll go chronologically.

Climbing Days by Dan Richards

I reviewed Climbing Days earlier on my blog, but this was the book that started me off on a quest for mountaineering literature. Its focus on a pioneer of British mountaineering, who also happens to be a woman, was a great hook. I loved reading snippets of Dorothy Pilley's adventures and those of the author, Dan Richards – both transported me, as a reader, to the places I dream of. The Lakes, the Alps, Welsh crags, the great outdoors, powerfully evoked throughout.

The upshot of reading Climbing Days was a short trip to Wasdale Head, where climbing as a sport first began (at least in the UK), with Walter Parry Haskett Smith's solo ascent of the Napes Needle. It is also the home of the Barn Door Shop, supplier of all the gear that hikers have forgotten to pack, as well as plenty of great literature of local interest. I came away with my next two reads...

Rock Queen by Catherine Destivelle

I started reading Rock Queen by the lounge fire of our cosy Wasdale Head B&B, whisky in hand, legs aching from a full day of hiking. It was perfect, and Catherine's no-nonsense, straight, driven narrative was a pleasure to read from the very start.

I didn't know it then, but Catherine is something of a legend in climbing and mountaineering circles, having completed first (often solo) ascents of some of the hardest rock faces and routes in the Alps and beyond, as well as being climbing world champion at a time that was the very beginning of competitive climbing. She began her climbing career while still at school, escaping to Fontainebleau and beyond each weekend. After she became world champion, she realised it wasn't what she wanted: her true passion lay in mountaineering, and so she turned her back on competing once and for all. It is so brilliant to read how she gave it all up to follow her own path.

It's hard to believe a bigger publisher didn't snatch this book to put out in English. My copy is from Hayloft Publishing, and albeit the translation and spell-check falter a little towards the end of the book, it is still a fascinating read about Catherine's life and genuinely jaw-dropping achievements. It made me want to try trad climbing for the first time in my life (the discipline where you place your own protective gear as you progress up a rock face).

A Line Above the Sky by Helen Mort

This was my second purchase at the Barn Door Shop, for a mixture of personal reasons, and also having seen Helen's name many times before. I felt it was time. 

This book is beautifully written, and is a poetic reflection of Helen's journey into motherhood. She is a climber and a fell runner, and although she yearned for it, being a mother didn't immediately feel natural for her. From the beginning, it made me sad.

A 'glass moth, a metal butterfly ': the first stirring of a new life in her. If I wanted reassurance that in motherhood, one can still have it all, I was disappointed – but Helen writes beautifully of the duality of a need for freedom and an even more desperate need to cling to her newborn. 'This is the purgatory of motherhood – perhaps of the human condition altogether – to want or need something else and then, as soon as you have it, to need the opposite.'

Throughout the book, she also traces the life of Alison Hargreaves, also a mother and accomplished climber who, six months pregnant, climbed the notorious North Face of the Eiger. She looks to her like her own mother figure, an example to her like I'd hoped Helen might be for me. In fact, the title of the book is that of a climb named by Alison's son, Tom Ballard. Which led me onto my next read, of course.

Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves by David Rose & Ed Douglas

Reading Alison Hargreaves' biography was a very different experience from Helen's tender reflections, but perhaps that's a good thing. Alison was a driven, outstanding mountaineer and climber who struggled against the unfair cards that had been dealt to her all her life. It was another heartbreaking read, this time because such a brilliant talent was being kept down by an abusive husband and her isolation from the climbing community. (Catherine Destivelle often crops up in the narrative as Alison jealously read about her achievements in the press.) She was never quite able to break out and make a name for herself to the extent that she wanted to.

Nevertheless, Alison's achievements are mind-blowing, though one may not appreciate their full force on paper: perhaps the most oustanding one worth mentioning here is being the first woman to climb Everest unsupported, carrying all her gear and without bottled oxygen. By this time, she had two children.

Alison died on K2, way too young. She had already completed the ascent and was on her way down when a storm enveloped her. The narrative of the book is sorrowful: it felt as though she was finally ready to leave her husband, to start a new life with her children, somewhere new. But it was not to be.

It is a deep look at the life, drive and passion of an excellent mountaineer who deserved so much more recognition than she got. I am surprised and somewhat outraged that I had to buy this book second-hand from some dodgy website.

I'm currently reading The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer – where shall I go next? Please leave your best mountaineering or climbing recommendations in the comments, so that I may continue my escapist reading frenzy...

Antoni Gaudí by Michael Eaude | Book Review | Critical Lives | Reaktion Books

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

I knew nothing about the life of Antoni Gaudí as I dove into this book. I did, however, remember visiting the Sagrada Família when I was young, and being blown away by architecture for the first time in my life. It is a magnificent building, truly unlike anything – with mythical figures and melons and coffee beans, decorated with glass and pottery shards, piled on top of spires like 99 Flakes, bursting with colour. It’s enough to take a quick glance at the Güell Pavillions Dragon Gate, or the Casa Batlló, to see what I mean.

I know even less about architecture, but it does strike me as unique that Gaudí was a ‘total architect’: he didn’t just design the brick-and-mortar structures, but also the interiors and, in some cases, even the furniture. Every nook and cranny, painted bird, cast-iron leaf or coloured glass shard came from him. His influences, presented in the book in good detail, are fascinating in their global scale: William Morris and John Ruskin, the Arts and Crafts movement, Persian and Orientalist flourishes, mudéjar (the work of Muslim craftsmen under Christian rule, a style still very prominent throughout Spain) and Gothic styles – despite travelling very little himself and learning mostly from the books he found in his university library.

The man behind all this dreamy colour, however, was not at all what I expected.‘There were three main strands to Gaudí’s thought: he was extremely right-wing, a fervent Catalanist and a militant Catholic.’

The depths of his fanaticism emerge in detail, including a fasting period during his midlife crisis that felt more like a hunger strike in its seriousness, and religious extremism in every aspect of his life.

He was brusque, often rude, haughty and rebellious but, inarguably, outrageously talented. He had no time for leisure: ‘In his pockets he usually carried bags of biscuits … stamped with a cross, which he nibbled frequently and distributed to whomever he was talking to. Formal meals used up too much valuable time, he thought.’

The book provides good historical context for some basic understanding of Gaudí’s motives and historical setting, and will be of interest to anyone who has seen, or is planning (or hoping) to see, some of his work. Notably, Eaude writes very accessibly: as and when he uses jargon, he is quick to explain in layman terms before one could even start panicking. Everything gets sufficient context, which is surprising for such a slim volume. Adorned with 57 illustrations and/or snaps, though black and white, it feels a complete picture of the man and the myth (though for a fuller experience, it is worth seeing the designs in colour).

The format of the book is doing it no favours, though. On first appearance, I was baffled by my own wish to read this – the small type, the glossy pages, the elongated paperback format all screamed academia. Luckily, I actually started reading it, and quickly realised looks could be deceiving. It turned out to be a very enjoyable and interesting read. (Admittedly, upon further research, the TLS said the series contained ‘very short critical biographies whose main target audience is likely to be undergraduates, but that will also do nicely for a general audience.’ So clearly I'm just a nerd.)

The book finishes on the question of what Gaudí would have made of his stellar success today. He is personally responsible for driving mass tourism to Barcelona, attracting more visitors annually than the Prado Museum in Madrid or the Alhambra in Granada. Eaude proposes he would have ‘taken reverence and admiration of his talent as his due … And would have fulminated against the irreligious, money-making mass consumption of tourism’.

A classic case of biting the hand that feeds, reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard’s literary prizes. It’s a complicated legacy, but the value of Gaudí’s revolutionary buildings and unique architecture is rock solid.