I'm a UK-based editor for a major publisher. I'm making it my off-duty duty to experience FIVE books, FIVE films, art, TV, music and food from every country in the world (where feasible). See drop down menus for my progress.
On my birthday this week I visited the Electric Dreams exhibition at London’s Tate Modern, which focuses on kinetic, optical, programmed and sometimes psychedelic art from the pre-internet era.
Nove Tendencije (New Tendencies) was the name of an international movement that exhibited in Croatia, in the city of Zagreb, between 1961 and 1973, in part launched by the art critic Matko Mestrovic. The movement was influenced by research into the nature of vision and (sometimes pseudo)science, and led to an interest in optical illusion, kinetic art, neo-constructivism and computer-generated art, and influenced the little-known Italian art movement Arte Programmata (Programmed Art).
Key artists involved in the New Tendencies movement included Ivan Picelj (1924-2011), who promoted the clear-as-mud concept of ‘active art [to] direct creative forces to positive social action’), and whose ‘New Tendencies 2’ (screen print and metallic paper on paper, 1963) is shown at the top of this post.
Aleksandar Srnec (1924-2010), meanwhile, was part of Zagreb’s EXAT 51 grouping, who promoted experimental methods in art-making, and took part in the early work of New Tendences. Srnec’ 1965-67 work Luminoplastic projects abstract shapes onto spinning metal wire shapes, using a sewing machine motor. I filmed it in motion at the exhibition, on loan from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb:
Electric Dreams is an extraordinary exhibition, which includes work by artists worldwide. There’s lots of fascinating stuff to see, although some can seems naive now (ooooh lasers), simply because what was revolutionary then now appears hackneyed, or has been dramatically usurped by modern technologies.
I recently enjoyed a travel book by comedy writer and playwright Annie Caulfield. Published in 2002, it details Annie’s journey through the little-known West African state of Benin with Isidore, a driver who is sometimes moody, often a control freak ‘I was an itinerant moron in his care and that was that’, always generous and entertaining, and who ultimately becomes a dear friend. The trip described in the book was made around the turn of the millennium, after Benin had made the transition from military rule to democracy in 1990. (In contrast, during the early post-independence period from 1960 there had been nine coups in the space of 12 years.)
Written with humour, the book is also informative, telling fascinating stories of the history, geography and culture of what was the kingdom of Dahomey, a place where the idea of magic (gri-gri) has played a prominent role in society. Isidore and Annie’s odd couple, sometimes frankly flirtatious, relationship is played for laughs, but can be moving, as when details of Isidore’s personal circumstances are revealed.
With Isidore as her guide and hustler (in the best possible meaning of the term), Annie negotiates her way through hotels and hostelries, experiences a Vodun (often known as Voodoo in the West) ceremony, meets eccentric local kings and takes a boat tour through the stilt village of Ganvie:
“A laughing little girl poled past us on an old door, two tiny sheep behind her on her vessel. ‘Give my sheep money, they’re hungry!’ … Just as I was wondering about the safety of very young children handstanding at the edge of their verandas, ten feet above the water a toddler fell with a wail backwards out of a window. No one batted an eyelid. He splashed upright in the water, spitting and laughing. … Luc [the boatman] smiled at my panic. ‘All children swim here. All!‘”
Elsewhere Annie gets beaten up by a toddler wielding a stick, who is hilariously horrified at the sight of a blonde, white person (yovo). Isidore notes, deadpan, ‘He doesn’t know what you are. You’re like a monster. Like a bad dream’.
I’d love to travel in West Africa on a trip like this, but no doubt would never have the nerve to make such an adventurous journey (particularly given the area is increasingly unstable around the borders with the military regimes of Burkina Faso and Niger).
Annie Caulfield died in 2016, and I believe the book is now out of print (I read a secondhand copy), but it hasn’t aged badly and is well worth a read if you come across it and if a trip to West Africa isn’t anywhere on the horizon.
After a two-month break, I’ve resurrected the blog, and have quite a bit to write up. Upcoming posts include reviews of Annie Caulfield’s Benin travelogue; Booker-winner The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai; a book on living in Slovenia by Sam Baldwin; and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. I’ll be reviewing multi-Oscar-nominated French movie Emilia Perez, eating and talking about Italian food, listening to music from France, watching the Colombian Netflix adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, talking about a current London art exhibition and listening to podcasts on the African state of Equatorial Guinea.
Books I have recently read, but for which I won’t be writing full reviews, include: Atomic Habits by James Clear (my conclusion: there’s more to life than maximising productivity, James); The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark (strange little book); Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (over-hyped over-thinkers – this from someone who more or less has a degree in over-thinking); and The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer (comedians should probably stick to comedy, though I lolled a couple of times). I’m currently reading Cher’s autobiography, which is certainly colourful.
We bought two kittens in late December (pictured), who are lots of fun and have been causing mayhem all through January and beyond. And after a lovely two-week break from work, it was back to the full-time grind with a bump on 6 January. Nevertheless I had a trip to my mum’s in rural Lincolnshire with my 20 year old daughter one weekend. We stayed for a few nights, doing work (me) and coursework (daughter), while being on hand while mum painted a wall (I half-joked I was only there to call the emergency services if she fell off her ladder) and watching movies with plenty of wine in the evenings. I then had a brief road trip to Brighton to return said daughter to her student house.
For Christmas I bought my husband tickets to see Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove in the West End, which was really entertaining, with excellent performances, particularly from Giles Terera as Gen. Buck Turgidson and John Hopkins as Gen. Jack Ripper.
I watched or rewatched a bunch of movies in January, and you can follow me on the Letterboxd app (ImGlad) if you’re that way inclined. I enjoyed the newly released Beatles documentary Beatles ’64 on Disney, which covered the year they broke America, with tons of archival footage. I didn’t realize the Beatles were so good on banter.
I also enjoyed a rewatch of the 2020 film Palm Springs, which is like a rebooted Groundhog Day, and very enjoyable. The recent Demi Moore vehicle The Substance was a let down, and very silly to boot, although her performance was good. I watched a few films with one or other of my daughters, including the 2006 Adam Sandler timeslip film Click (I love a timeslip, and this also has a great cameo from the always excellent Christopher Walken) and the coming-of-age Bruce Springsteen-orientated movie Blinded by the Light (2019).
What else have I done? Listened to some semi-forgotten albums on Spotify, notably Depeche Mode’s 1990 release Violator, and the Eurythmics 1983 album Sweet Dreams. Watched the addictive BBC series Traitors (me to my son: ‘I want hair like Claudia’s’; 15 year old son, totally serious: ‘you need to use Head and Shoulders then’. Went out to eat French-ish food with work at Brasserie Blanc on the Southbank, and went to a work friend’s 60th birthday party at a new cocktail bar in Harringey – it used to be a bookies, and I wondered if it was one I had worked in when I had student jobs in the 1990s working in a series of betting shops for two different chains!
Finally, I took a day off work to visit the Van Gogh show at the National Gallery, which was heavily booked up (I’d waited in an online queue for tickets for two hours) and very busy – but full of great pictures, clearly! Rounded it off with lunch at Thai restaurant Busaba on Wardour St.
When I read Phil Wang’s book Side Splitter, which I reviewed earlier in the year, I enjoyed his chapter on food, in which he deservedly marvelled at the blandness of much British food (in particular so-called ‘party food’), and talked about how comparatively delicious and interesting Malaysian food was (with the notable exception of the puddings).
I realized I’d never actually tasted Malaysian cuisine, and cooped up at home after recent surgery I googled local Malaysian takeaways, and found that there was one about a 15-minute drive away imaginatively called the Malaysian Deli and located on Brockley Road in London SE4. It had some rave reviews, and seemed to attract repeat customers to its small dining space as well as for takeaway orders.
I thought the food might turn out to be quite familiar, like a Chinese or Thai takeout, but while the meal was fragrant like Thai food, it was entirely unique in its flavours. To start, we went for gado-gado: a vegetarian starter that was described as a Malay-style salad with tofu and vegetables, served with a peanutty sauce. This I enjoyed, despite remembering as it arrived that I don’t really like tofu.
We followed up with a vegan percik, aubergine cooked in a mild and creamy coconut sauce, together with lemongrass, onion, garlic and turmeric. We also both tried the chicken rendang, a traditional Malaysian curry, which is drier than a sauce-based curry, and was described on the menu as slow-cooked in coconut milk, lemongrass (again), galangal (a herb often used in South-East Asian cooking, and also known as Thai ginger or Siamese ginger) and lime leaves. We also ordered a portion of prawn crackers, which I see as some kind of barometer of quality. Although described as medium-hot the rendang was just the right side of heavy with the chilli flavours, with a distinct gingery taste, along with a pleasant nuttiness. All in all this was a pleasingly different meal from our usual default takeaway choices.
Although takeaways photograph badly, I’ve included a pic anyway.
It was finally time to start and finish something by the Nobel laureate. I’d got some way into two earlier books by Olga Tokarczuk, on Kindle and audio, but these formats can be tricky. I find Kindle text impenetrable for all but the easiest of reads. Audio books are the same; if the content is at all intellectually challenging I just start thinking about work or the other issues du jour. So I armed myself with a physical copy of The Emposium, published by the magnificent Fitzcarraldo and Tokarczuk’s latest in English translation, which I reserved at my local library. The subject matter appealed: it sounded Gothic. Plus, I was confined to the house following surgery, with three weeks off work to recuperate. Come on girl, you can do this, I thought.
The opening was promising. In 1913 tubercular Mieczylaw (Mieczys) Wojnicz, a student of hydroengineering and sewage systems, travels to a Central European health resort from Lwow (now the Ukrainian city of Lviv). He stays at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen, run by the faintly sinister Wilhelm Opitz, who is aided by the modish psychoanalytical theories of Doctor Semperweiss. Disconcertingly, Opitz’s wife dies in uncertain circumstances almost as soon as Mieczys arrives (and is briefly laid out on the dining table for all to see). As Mieczys’s stay lengthens, the atmosphere becomes increasingly uncomfortable and mysterious.
Each evening the guests/patients, who exhibit various degrees of eccentricity, meet for dinner. This meal sounds largely unappealing, except the residents are served copious amounts of the mysterious local liqueur, Schwarmerei, which interferes with perception (“as if the world were built of plywood and were now delaminating before their eyes”) and loosens tongues (before inertia sets in). A world of arcane and outlandish theories emerges around this very masculine table, which always circle back to the perceived inadequacies of women.
“Whenever he lay down after boozing (promising himself not to drink so much of this demonic brew!), under his eyelids he saw flares, or figures that seemed to be made out of little mirrors reflecting each other and their surroundings from various angles, sending his vision into a truly agonizing frenzy. Another world was storming his body, trying to get inside his brain, by sending out flashes and illusions.”
Although billed as a ‘horror story’ there are no jump scares here, and the book is lightly plotted, focusing on theme and language. The action all takes place within the final third of the novel, but this doesn’t detract from the fun. With nods to Thomas Mann, this is a wry and enjoyable novel, expertly translated and blending feminist satire, humour, history and the supernatural.
‘Ama Gloria’ is technically a 2023 French film, but most of the action takes place in the African island state of Cabo Verde (Cape Verde). I caught a screening a little while ago at our local Picturehouse cinema, which sometimes shows foreign films, although fewer, it seems, than before the COVID pandemic. Maybe they’re less willing to take a gamble on ticket sales these days.
It is a touching and emotionally intimate film, directed by Marie Amachouleki-Barsacq, which presents a child’s-eye view of the world. This choice of perspective can be a recipe for disaster – who can really remember what it is like to inhabit a child’s consciousness? – but I found it be well-handled here.
When the film opens, six-year-old Cleo (played by Louise Mauroy-Panzani) is living in Paris with her widower father, who is kind but mostly at work. Most of Cleo’s time is spend with her adored nanny, Gloria (Ilca Morena). We see the two of them happily engaged in day-to-day activities, Gloria emanating warmth and Cleo full of giggles.
But one day Gloria learns that her own mother has died back home in Cabo Verde, where she also has children of her own. She resolves to return to her family for good, but motherless Cleo is broken-hearted and begs to be allowed to spend the summer in Cabo Verde at Gloria’s family home. Mauroy-Panzani’s performance is extraordinary, at times heart-rending and always entirely credible.
The beauty of the archipelago of Cabo Verde is depicted with almost mythical extravagance, but the relative poverty of Gloria’s life there in comparison with Cleo’s comfortable middle-class life in Paris is also evident. Cleo comments innocently on the diminutive size of Gloria’s house (“It’s small but it’s mine” she replies).
During her time in Cabo Verde Cleo experiences ups and some quite significant downs. Gloria’s teenage daughter is pregnant, and once the baby arrives her attention is inevitably divided, and Cleo, who is used to being treated as a much-loved youngest daughter, is jealous.
Cleo must learn to accept that although Gloria loves her dearly, she has made her decision to remain in Cabo Verde, while Cleo must ultimately return to her life in Paris, and a new nanny. The plot is secondary to the emotional truths of the film, which while raw at times is imbued with warmth throughout.
This was book 11 of my 20 books of summer, a recently published rock autobiography by Blondie musician Chris Stein, and a bit of a disappointment overall. As the guitarist in an iconic new wave/rock band, who had a romantic relationship with Debbie Harry for over a decade, I thought it might be reflective and insightful, and I guess I was hoping for a bit of rock gossip.
Unfortunately the book was low on introspection and on information. I didn’t really get a sense of either his or Harry’s character. Stein even seemed, dare I say it , a bit boring: just a guy who likes guitars and has a few other niche interests. It really stripped away any sense of mystique!
However, I did get a good cat name out of reading this book (Stein’s childhood cat was called Elizabeth Noodle Soup – beat that!), which I’m stealing, and it did have the odd interesting moment.
Stein was addicted to drugs from an early age and for a very long time, and I wonder if this might have had an impact on his ability to recollect events. There was a fair amount of narrative that went (and I paraphrase): ” We went to a party, and David Bowie was there, but I don’t remember much about it.”
There is a really affecting epilogue to this book, in which Stein tells of the death of his teenage daughter from an accidental overdose, which took place after he had finished writing the book. Stein acknowledges somewhat chasteningly here that in reality addiction all too often has tragic consequences, despite a market for confessional “war stories”.
A very quick review of The Echoes, which was book 10 of my 20 books of summer, and probably my favourite read of the summer so far. It’s written by Evie Wyld, who was named one of the Best of Young British Writers by Granta in 2013.
The Echoes has only just come out, and I wasted no time in plunging into it, with an immediately engaging narrative that weaves in and out of different time frames: ‘Before’, ‘After’ and ‘Then’.
It opens ‘After’ with the voice of Max, hitherto a creative writing tutor, and now a ghost who is rather reluctantly haunting the South London flat where he lived until his death with his Australian girlfriend Hannah:
“I do not believe in ghosts, which, since my death, has become something of a problem.”
Hannah has been emotionally scarred by events that took place during her childhood back home, which she has kept from Max, and the narrative spools back in time to both her life on a goat farm with her rural Australian family and to the time that follows her move to London, where she met and moved in with Max.
It is an intelligent, literary novel, and one that is a bit experimental and high-concept, but it’s also a really pacy page-turner, and I loved every minute I spent reading this book. I’m not big on gritty these days, and there are some shocking revelations both about Hannah’s family history and the dark history of the place where she was raised, and where terrible abuse was visited on the Aboriginal population. However, this is counter-balanced by the very contemporary, natural dialogue, and a strong undercurrent of humour (including a fantastic set piece involving Christmas with Max’s dreadful parents) in the sections set in South London. And I loved that I could recognise the locations in the sections set in London, where I live.
This 1995 novel, which is book 9 of my 20 books of summer, feels like it should be much older, if only because it seems to been on my radar forever.
The book follows some 30 years in the life of a man called Michael Berg, who recalls his sexual involvement with Hanna, a woman more than twice his age, when he was just 15. It is an intense, stormy and uneven relationship that for a time utterly consumes Michael, although he has normal teenage interests too, and when Hanna mysteriously leaves town he seems to come to terms with both the ‘affair’ and her abandonment of it.
“When I see a woman of thirty-six today, I find her young. But when I see a boy of fifteen, I see a child.”
Years later, while studying law, Michael unexpectedly encounters Hanna at a Nazi war crimes trial where she is appearing as a defendant, accused of terrible crimes while guarding Jewish prisoners. Michael is naturally engrossed by the trial but also confused by some of Hanna’s behaviour during it, as she seems to act counter to her own interests. It dawns on Michael that Hanna has another secret that she is determined to conceal.
As the story unfolds it becomes clear that Michael’s entanglement with Hanna as a teenager has impacted his whole life – and Hanna’s, and they remain distantly connected. His marriage fails, his relationship with his daughter seems distant, and he struggles to reconcile his erotic teenage memories with his knowledge of Hanna’s actions during the War.
The Reader deals with big themes of guilt, accountability, abuse and deprivation, but is written in deceptively simple prose, like a young adult novel. I wondered if it was aimed at teenagers, but its themes seemed very adult.
An unexpectedly large proportion of the books I read deal with issues around the Second World War, presumably because it was such a massive event in the 20th century that its themes continue to dominate ‘serious’ literature. I also seem to be reading an unsavoury amount of fiction about under-age illicit relationships – I read and review Duras’s The Lover only last month.
Himself a lawyer and a judge, Schlink’s writing questions not only Hanna’s actions, but also the response to those actions by others, and what humans in general are capable of doing – or not doing.
This is book 8 of my 20 books of summer, which I finished a couple of weeks ago but have taken a while to write up.
The New Life is a 2023 debut novel that has been raved about in the press. It’s set in the buttoned-up Victorian era (I love a Victorian pastiche), and based on real events. John is a married, upper middle-class gay man, who by necessity lives with his wife and three daughters in a closeted and sexless marriage and a permanent state of sexual frustration as he lusts after the men he sees around the streets of London.
He eventually becomes attached to a younger, very good-looking and rather dapper man who is from a different social class. John falls for him hard, to the extent that he risks moving him into his home as his unlikely ‘secretary’, much to his wife Catherine’s mortification.
Henry, meanwhile, is a shy, straight man with embarrassing sexual foibles that are not easily satisfied (he likes – or needs – to watch women pee), and he seeks a life that separates the institution of marriage from the act of sex. He ends up living (not entirely willingly) with a lesbian wife who openly romances a female friend.
Henry and John collaborate on a academic work entitled ‘Sexual Inversion’ (based on a real 1897 book), which seeks to normalize atypical sexual feeling, specifically homosexual desire (‘inversion’ in the parlance of the time). Unfortunately, however, the publication of their book, which contains confessional accounts by gay men (albeit mostly using euphemistic Greek terminology), coincides with the infamous Oscar Wilde trial, and therefore puts both their careers and their positions in society at risk.
After all the fanfare I found the book good, but not that good. The character I was most moved by was possibly Catherine, as she ended up with nothing but wasted decades and the occasional borderline rape incident (at those times when John’s state of repressed horn got too much for him and he would ‘take her’ in a frenzy). Catherine’s life, as John’s, was ruined by her marriage. But whereas John, for all his longstanding frustrations, as a member of the patriarchy had the agency and financial freedom that ultimately enabled him to indulge his desires and build a life moulded around erotic pleasure and sexual obsession, she was simply missold a husband and left to grow increasingly lonely and embittered.
There’s lots of vividly described sex in this novel, and with its Victorian setting it reminded me of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White. That was more fun, though The New Life has some important social points to make..
Imogen is Reading and Watching the World: On Books, Film, Art & More 