Review of "The Spinning Heart" by Donal Ryan

A really hard read, about a rural (or perhaps peri-urban) community in the west of Ireland in the aftermath of the property boom and collapse. It's told from multiple perspectives - each chapter written by a different first person narrator - but describing linked events. Along the way it shows how the boom and collapse exacerbated tensions and fault lines that were already present in the community.

Not a long book, but I could only read a few pages at a time, because it felt so intense. Highly recommended.

Review of That We May Face The Rising Sun

Well that's nearly two hours of my life that I'm not getting back. Slow, beautiful but very dull Irish film about a handsome young Irish writer and his beautiful European (French? German? Impossible to say and not explained in the narrative) living in a remote Irish village as sometime farmers, though still pursuing their more urban careers - in the absence of internet or even telephones. 

There's an awful lot of not much happening, apart from some knowing smiles between the couple, and drinking booze and tea between the couple and the other villagers. 

I fell asleep for at least half an hour but I didn't seem to have missed anything.

Oddly the man character reminded me of the man from the Oxo advert series from the 1970s, which I didn't even know I had remembered. Looking again it turns out to have been a false memory, there's little resemblance. Maybe I was thinking of the Tom character from 1970s sitcom The Good Life, where the resemblance is really very strong.

Watched at the Lansdown Film Club.

Review of "Travels with Myself and Another" by Martha Gellhorn

Martha Gellhorn made her reputation as a war correspondent, but most of this book (compiled, I think, from previously published essays) is about all the other stuff that happens around the edge of the fighting. The first long section takes around China during the war between the Japanese and various Chinese forces, and it's brilliantly evocative of the misery of travel - the damp, the dirt, the waiting...

And then she's in the Caribbean, sailing between islands to try to find German U-boats...which she doesn't find at all, but she does encounter lots of other stuff - racists, expats of various nationalities and persuasions, some American air force people. 

It's not all war time. She goes to French West Africa as it transitions to phoney independence, and she writes about the racism of the French residents but also her own racism, and in particular the visceral, unwelcome physical reaction she has to the smell and the appearance of some (but not all) Africans. 

There's lots more - her attempt to go on a safari with a guide who is a Kikuyu gay Presbyterian "driver" who can't really drive and doesn't know the country at all is brilliant.

Really enjoyable read.

Review of "Timothy's Book: Notes of an English Country Tortoise" by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Gentle, enjoyable book about...well, a tortoise, imported into a C18th village in Surrey, where it lives in the sometimes-care of a country vicar who is a naturalist. It's based on a real tortoise, and a real vicar, and most of the book is based on his field notes, which were eventually published. 

There's lots of beautiful nature writing, and the additional twist is the imagined perspective of a tortoise, which is slower, but also much longer-lived, than any of the humans in its environment.

This sounds really dull, and I was a bit put off by four pages of celebrity endorsements and quotes from reviews, but it was actually a great read. Oddly I have no memory of how it came to be on our bookshelf, though I see it was purchased from Oxfam in Muswell Hill.

Review of Moulin Rouge

I haven't watched this since it came out back in 2001, and it was an absolute joy to watch - fabulous sets, lovely costumes, surprisingly good singing from a younger Euan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. Lots of nice details that bear looking at more than once, like Kylie's cameo as the anise fairy early on.

I noticed that the very large elephant in the forecourt of the Moulin Rouge nightclub is surprisingly similar to the the animatronic "Sultan's Elephant" that came to London in 2006 - did the latter borrow from the former, or were they both based on something that existed previously?

Watched in the Common House at Springhill via a USB stick and informal distribution.

Review of Rose

A Danish film about a middle-aged woman with schizophrenia whose sister (and sister's husband) takes her on a coach trip to Paris. It's not billed as a comedy, but there are some very funny moments in it, along with lots of pathos and tragedy. I don't know to what extent schizophrenia is like this - and there's not much attempt to portray Rose's inner world, just her outer behaviour. 

I was particularly touched by the way that Rose is more confident and competent when she's in France (where she had a teenage love affair with a married man that precipitated her illness) and when she's speaking French.

Along the way I learned that D-Day is really important to Danish historical memory - I had no idea about this, and about the exiled Danish sailors who participated.

Watched at Lansdown Hall through the film club, and one of the best films I've seen there for a while.