Faulks on Lovers

I'm enjoying listening to Simon Faulks on a Saturday night ~ Faulks on Fiction on BBC2. Last week he talked about Heroes, last night it was about Lovers. Of course, dear old Darcy came into the line-up, but with an added twist ~ Faulks thinks he may have been depressed. Therefore, it follows that Lizzie's attraction was vitality, and she made him a better man, illustrating love as a force for good. Heathcliff on the other hand, is a man deranged by love, and love is shown as a negative, destructive force.

Jane Austen saw marriage as a place where love could be sustained, but Doris Lessing saw marriage as a place where love died. Lady C, he thinks, is the first novel to bring love and sex together. All in all, a fascinating resume of lovers in literature. If you missed it, catch it on iplayer.

The only caveat I have is that I found the way Faulks stalks the countryside, acting as voyeur to these lovers, a little odd. I could have enjoyed the film clips better, I think, without watching Faulks watch them.

Grey days

I've been doing a lot of reading lately.

Among the many historical reprints to hit the bookshop shelves in the last couple of years was a book by Margaret Irwin, first published in 1941 under the title The Gay Galliard. The new version is, as you might guess, on the shelves as simply The Galliard. It brings home very sharply the way novels have changed in the last couple of decades. The story of Mary Queen of Scots and Bothwell, told from Bothwell's point of view, and almost non-fictional in its approach. Lots of author asides, info dumps and the last chapter begins: "He never saw her again. That is why this story ends here..." and then goes on to tell the rest of their individual stories in two pages. The book is also a victim of computer technology in that certain words have been mysteriously changed, sometimes amusingly: modern becomes modem, avid becomes arid.

A Week in December is my first Sebastian Faulks, and I enjoyed the many sub-plots, including the hedgefund manager who single-handedly causes the banking crisis we're all suffering, the would-be terrorist, and the quick peek Faulks gives me into alternative computer worlds and best of all, RTranter, the bitter literary critic who longs for his own work to gain recognition. Well worth a read.

The pic is Corbridge peering down at the Tyne which is running a mite high after all the rain we've had lately. This afternoon we're going to have quick trip across to our nearest Borders bookshop to see if there is anything to buy for Christmas presents. All stock is for sale at half price, barring the three for the priceof two deals, so they say.