Books to read when your heart is heavy

Books to read when your heart (for whatever reason) feels heavy, or scalded, or broken are very different from reading books that are about that.  Those, I find anyway, are not helpful.  When you are tottering on the verge of weeping into your pillow at night, every night, I want a book that absorbs me to the point that I simply cannot think of anything else.  Distraction is the key.  Not too heavy, not too sad, not too many plots to follow. I don't want too much brash honesty and truths, what I'm after is a shifting canvas. Lawrence Durrell and The Alexandrian Quartet is about as perfect as it gets. Consistently voted as one of the best novels of all times, by people, I assume, who KNOW about such literary things, it is a masterpeice of deceptions and shifting ground.  Justine, Balthazar, Clea and Mountolive make up the four books. I first read these when I was an angst ridden teenager (skipping bits, I'm sure) then I forgot about them.  They found a home on the top shelf and stayed there for years.  Later, in my thirties, my heart was broken (a man) and I took myself off for a solitary weekend by the sea in France.  For some reason (directed I suspect from my guiding reading angel) I slung two of these in a bag. They absorbed me so that I didn't think of the man for a full half hour of the time.  (And anyone who has been through that particular heartache will appreciate just how long thirty minutes can be...) They are set in Egypt and centre around Justine.  What was she? A spy? A thwarted woman in love? A sex crazed frustrated wife? All of those things and maybe none of them. The book presents one story told by four different perspectives . Lost in a world of intrigue and sand, wealth and poverty, the all pervading palm print that is put on walls to evade the evil eye -  hidden truths and lies come alive. Smallpox, gout, amputation, terrible uncured sexual diseases, heat, love and lust are played out against the backdrop of Alexandria.  Nothing is as it seems. Once you have tasted that world, you can drink deeply and settle down to losing yourself completely to it. 

I was intriuged to discover that they play bibliomancy in the books, and I have done so ever since.  Just as accurate as the I Ching and a lot more fun. I am heartbroken this weekend (not a man, but a beloved dog) and so, I made some mint tea and started to read again...

Charleston

After a staggeringly wonderful reading weekend at Tilton House (more of which later) it seemed rude not to wander down the track for a tour of the sublime next door neighbour of Charleston with the magical garden. Of course, it was hard not to resent the other guests which seemed to be wandering through my garden, but with a willing spirit I tried my best... the foxgloves, the roses, the wild strawberries, the lavender, the apple orchards, the pond, the waterlillies, the mosaics, the statues seemed to be from an age that I longed to be in.  Even the tour of the house with its casual boho decor, the careless sheaves of old magazines and books, the narrow beds adn the unheated bathrooms didn't distract from the longing to live there. I even had a slight spooky moment in Clive's boudoir (do men have boudoirs? - no matter) where I thought I saw from the corner of my eye, just for a nano second the outline of a portly smiling man... Vanessa's glasses were on the table (I read somewhere amongst the many, many books of the Bloomsbury lot that she started the day with strong coffee, an orange, and a cigarette which I find endearing) and her enduring art fills the small farmhouse that was rented to her and her family for more generations than she could possibly have imagined. 

In the shop the books on all things Bloomsbury are seductively prolific.  There was one amongst them that I had read the previous year - Mrs Woolf and the Servants by Alison Light that had stayed with me... Virginia and Vanessa were, so they thought, both blessed and cursed by the servant question.  Some remained 'loyal' and others 'turned against them'.  The life and conditions of their servants were probably no better or no worse than others of the time, but it made me realise that much as I longed to live in that house and take tea with Lytton and Carrington, Clive and Vanessa, waving at Angelica playing by the pond and watching the sun set over the haystacks whist discussing high art and sketching famous profiles, I would no doubt feel guilty about the scullery maid washing up in the chipped enamal sink with cold water. I sighed, stole a strawberry and went home to wash up in my warm kitchen with copious amounts of hot water.

Diana Athill OBE OMG

I had the real pleasure of meeting Ms Athill in the rather swanky surroundings of Shoreditch House and like a fool I was rendered speechless.

She was introduced as ‘Our Lady of Letters Diana Athill, O.B.E . OMG!’ and the audience clapped and hooted appreciatively. What a woman.

Stylishly dressed in a black and white long Nehru tunic, wide legged black pants and an enormous silver necklace she looked the part of the grand dame of letters. With her silver hair and walking stick it was hard to believe that she was 93.

I’d read her book the month before, indeed galloped through the large volume (at one point reading it in bed I let the large volume slip through my fingers and thought for a moment that I’d broken my nose, so large and heavy is it.) And the contents stayed with me for weeks. It’s searingly honest and touches on subjects that made me think rather uncomfortably about things that we all tend to push to the back of our mind. Death, aging, past lovers, and friends lost. That sounds gloomy. But it isn’t. Hers is a sparkling clear voice of wisdom in a wilderness of clamouring. Her life as an editor, where she seems to have practically edited everyone who is anyone of modern contemporary literature is a list of superstars. And her dealing with such fragile and monstrous (sometimes) egos is touching and revealing.

She said when being interviewed by the master of ceremonies himself – the urbane and witty Damian Barr, that one of the good things about growing older is that she doesn’t remember if she’d read a book before or not – so that she has the absolute delight of reading an old favourite as if for the first time.

How wonderful.

She was in conversation for over half an hour and held an audience of over 200 enraptured. Her talk of Jean Rhys, Molly Keane, her delight on moving into sheltered accommodation, her love of books made you feel that you had just made a new friend.

Perhaps the most moving part of the evening was when she told of her anguish at realising that she had room for only (!) 300 books in her new home. Her nephew spent three days with her, holding up books for her to decide to keep or chuck. These were not ‘just’ books to her. They were her life. And every single one was a treasured friend that represented a massive part of her life.

The personal stories she recounted in her clear voice were a privilege to hear, and when questions were being taken from the floor, for some reason I shrank from asking anything. I think I felt that the best present I could give her was not to pry any more, but to let her enjoy her applause.

I know, I know, what a fool.

A keeper, I would imagine....