Wednesday 6 July 2016

CLEVER GIRL


In the middle of this book and loving it.  The principal character was born around the same year as I (1951), and the book chronicles her life from childhood to middle-age.  The chapters are like mini essays with the 'happenings' of the particular period finished at the end with a poignant observation about her thoughts on looking back at that particular period.  She captures the essence of the periods she writes about.  "Listen to this David!" and I read him a passage.  "Wasn't it just like that?"...

"...People forget that in 1966 there were still bomb sites:  it took a long time to stitch back together that fabric of our cities ripped open by the war - or rather, not to stitch it back at all, but to tear the fabric out and throw it away and put something different in its place...Sometimes I'm nostalgic now for that old intricate decay, as if it was a vanished subtler style, overlaid by the banality of making over and smartening up that came later.  My mother never was nostalgic.  She got out the minute she had the chance..."

An edit to this post...

There was a note at the end of this book which said that two of the chapters had been published by the New Yorker as short stories, something I picked up while reading - a certain completeness about the chapters.

1 comment:

  1. This sounds like a good read, Connie. I do remember those bomb sites ... we had a great big hole behind our church for a very long time. I think there are some houses there now, the big hole a forgotten memory.
    We had a lot of men with limbs missing, but they too have gone, hopefully to greener pastures...

    ReplyDelete