My Top 10 Tracks from the Island of Ireland

It’s Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy. Admittedly, these aren’t books, but here is some of my favourite music from the island of Ireland.

  1. Glue by Bicep (2017): Belfast duo Bicep are dismissed by some as middle-class, middle-aged dinner party electronica, but I unapologetically love this nostalgic serotonin rush of a song.

2. Courage by Villagers (2015): Conor O’Brien channels a sort of late ’60s folk vibe, and this song is just gorgeous, as is Everything I Am Is Yours off the same album.

3. One by U2 (1991): Not a big U2 fan, but I asked for the album Achtung Baby for birthday way back in 1991 on the basis of this song. I remember being sorely disappointed with the rest of the album, with the exception of the fab The Fly (and so much tape winding and rewinding was required to find the two decent tracks!).

4. Teenage Kicks by The Undertones (1978): A Northern Irish pop/punk classic that was reputedly awarded a 28-star rating (out of 5) on its release by iconic DJ John Peel.

5. A Lady of a Certain Age by Divine Comedy (2006): I’m not usually a big fan of this Northern Irish band, led by Neil Hannon, but I do love this one.

6. I Don’t Like Mondays by Boomtown Rats (1979): A song that’s not heard often these days, it was the sixth most popular song of 1979 according to Wiki. The dark lyrics reference a school shooting in that year in the US. Here’s Bob Geldof performing the song at 1985’s Live Aid concert

7. Ramalama (Bang Bang) by Roisin Murphy (2005): energetic electronica with a banging baseline from 50% of the band Moloko (of The Time is Now fame).

8. Watermark by Enya (1988): There’s undoubtedly something deeply cheesy about Enya, but I can’t help loving this beautiful instrumental track.

9. Zombie by the Cranberries (1994): written in response to the death of two children in an IRA bombing, it’s a howl of rage and despair from Cranberries singer Denise O’Riordan who tragically died in 2018.

10. Take Me to Church by Hozier (2013): Famed for its amazing video, the song describes a gay relationship stigmatized by religious discrimination. According to Wikipedia some people unfortunately took the title literally and “were very upset” when they discovered the song was “not actually about being taken to church”.

Classics Club #33 (My 2nd Spin)

Joining in with this again, for just the second time, as I’m working my way through a pile of ad hoc classics as well as the 1001 books list.

Last spin gave me the momentum to read and enjoy Sebald’s modern classic Austerlitz, so I’m looking forward to finding out what comes up this time. I’ve removed that book from the list, as well as Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which I read recently on audio book, and Tove Ditlvesen’s strange and disturbing The Faces, which I read in January. I’ve had to rejig the list a bit more too, as lots of my books are in storage pending building work!

My Book Spin List for the Classics Club

1 Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
2 The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
3 The Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair
4 The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
5 Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
6 Emma by Jane Austen
7 The Infatuations by Javier Marias
8 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
9 Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
10 On Beauty by Zadie Smith
11 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
12 Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta
13 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
14 Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
15 Thank You Jeeves by P G Wodehouse
16 The Middle Ground by Margaret Drabble
17 The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas
18 The Annotated Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
19 Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
20 The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twen Eng

TV series Squid Game (South Korea)

Korean export Squid Game was all over the media about 18 months ago, so it had to be my TV selection for South Korea. Astonishingly, Netflix UK claimed Squid Game was its most successful debut ever, with 111 million viewers across the world, although the methodology used to arrive at this conclusion was unclear. South Koreans were apparently bewildered by the success of the series overseas. Had we simply run out of stuff to watch after endless COVID lockdowns and delayed TV production schedules?

Certainly subtitled TV has been losing both the ‘fear factor’ and the snob factor and has entered the mainstream. Not before time, and not unexpected given the fact that a fair few people watch TV with the subtitles on even in English, as well as the fact that South Korean film Parasite (which I reviewed here) won the Oscar for best film in early 2020.

Social media seems to be the main explanation for the show’s popularity. My son canvassed us to let him watch it after seeing clips on Tik Tok, and claimed “everyone” at school had watched it.

The premise of Squid Game is not particularly original: disenfranchised down and outs compete in a raft of violent and often fatal games, as previously seen in films such as 1980s Arnie vehicle The Running Man and, more recently, The Hunger Games. What is original is the horror of the design: these games are based on innocent childhood pastimes, and given a horribly sinister spin. The games’ losers are killed instantly. For the overall winner, however, there is a tantalisingly enormous cash prize.

The first two episodes of Squid Game were full of back story, and I found them a bit tedious (despite usually far preferring character development to senseless violence). However, seeing the characters’ lives outside the Squid Game scenario helped to explain why they would return to the game even when given a chance to leave. Indeed, in episode 3 we learn that the ‘re-entrance rate’ is 93%, while those who haven’t returned are nevertheless being monitored.

As the competitors are ruthlessly whittled down, there is everything to play for, and Squid Game plays out to its perverse conclusion.

Film review: Close (Belgium)

If there ever was a film to make you want to hold your children tight it’s Close, directed and co-written by Lukas Dhont.

Shortlisted in the category of Best International Feature at the upcoming Oscars, Close tells the story of two best friends, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele), who are teetering on the brink of adolescence.

They spend beautifully shot golden, giggling summer days together, playing games, running wild in the fields, and enjoying regular sleepovers. The boys are close, expressing easy physical warmth with each other, but it is an unusually intense friendship that is immediately picked up on and questioned by the students at their new secondary school, who tease them about being a couple with a curiosity that borders on bullying.

This teasing places a strain on their friendship, as they try to cope in their different ways with teen life, with Leo trying out new, more macho interests (football, ice hockey) and new friends. Rémi is increasingly pushed aside, and full of confusion and raw pain. I can still remember the hurt of being dumped by a close friend as a teenager! Then the unthinkable happens, and Léo is confronted with a whole new reality.

This is a coming of age tale of the most brutally moving kind. I sobbed in that cinema, with tears rolling down my face and dripping off my chin; afterwards I overheard a man admitting to a friend: “I was just a mess in there for a full half an hour”. The film captures universal vulnerabilities of adolescence, as well as the characters’ individual difficulties, and with a young teen son it hit particularly close to home.

Close is a emotionally intense tear-jerker that ought to come plastered in trigger warnings, but ultimately deserves the plaudits.

Book review: Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (Scotland)

I loved this work of non-fiction by the Scottish writer Cal Flyn. Although I’m often bored by nature writing it had been so well-received that I put it on my wish list and asked for it for my birthday last year. It still took me a year to get round to it, but it was well worth reading. The book, sub-titled ‘Life in the Post-Human Landscape’ won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for both the Wainwright Prize for writing on conservation and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2021.

Flyn discusses several ‘post-human’ landscapes, among them the buffer zone of the frozen conflict between Cyprus proper and the Turkish-claimed (and internationally unrecognised) ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’, the land surrounding Chernobyl, the forever blighted soil of Verdun in France following the First World War and the deserted Scotland island of Swona. She describes scenarios as different as urban US areas virtually destroyed by the impact of over-zealous industrial expansion, and the invasive plant species of Amani in Tanzania.

Flyn visited the abandoned places discussed in the book, both urban and rural, so this is a personal account as opposed to a polemic written from a garret. The writing, often in the first person present, is beautiful, conjuring for the reader a vividly evocative account of nature left to its own devices, a well-shaped mixture of subjective experience and scientific and historical evidence.

The main takeaway from the book is unexpectedly positive. Flyn is hopeful about regeneration, telling of the return of wolves and bears to the woods around Chernobyl in Ukraine, and the flourishing herds of feral cows on the deserted Scottish Orkney island of Swona, which demonstrate a fascinating social hierarchy. I found the writing on animals more engaging than Flyn’s deep dives into plant species, but the book is never dull, and never spends too long discussing one place or topic.

Despite the positivity about environmental recovery, there is recognition that the current rate of human-inspired degradation continues to outpace it. But this is overall a hopeful book – the natural environment will no doubt thrive without us.

“When he drops me on the island, Hamish the boatman has a last piece of advice: ‘Stay in the house at night,’ he says, ‘and lock the door behind you’.

‘Oh?’ I say, taken aback.

‘Don’t camp outdoors,’ he repeats, ‘or the cows will trample you. Make sure you sleep in the house. See you tomorrow.’ Then he’s gone, and I’m left alone on my desert island. Just me, and the birds, and these trampling cattle. I turn to face it: green and tumbledown and wind-battered, and feel for the first time a shiver of unease.

Art review: Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017)

“I am interested in every tangle of thread and rope and every possibility of transformation … I am not interested in the practical usefulness of my work”

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s woven installations have been on display at Tate Modern since November, and the exhibition runs until May. I’ve seen the exhibition three times over the past month: once dropping in to a private view with my membership after a slightly boozy work do nearby, then again on a day doing the galleries with my mum, and finally with my son and daughter during half term, a day out that also fulfilled a GCSE art homework requirement. I’m definitely getting my money’s worth from the membership at the moment.

Abakanowicz was born into an aristocratic Tatar family, but her family exited the war in much weakened position. Nevertheless, and despite the strictures of communism, living and working after the War in Poland she became internationally renowned for her work with natural fibres and for the immense scale of that work.

Magdalena Abakanowicz with her husband at their wedding:

The exhibition opens with wall-hung weavings with colourways that reminded me of 1970s hall carpets. Maybe my own 1970s hall carpet – it would have been at eye-level regularly at the age I was then.

However, the monumental woven sculptures that make up the core of the exhibition are mysterious and appealingly intense, and these so-called ‘Abakans’ make up a ‘fibrous forest’. They are shaggy and enveloping, like enormous cloaks or alien forms, and their sheer scale creates a feeling of spectacle. For Abakanowicz, they represented a refuge and a safe space “like the hollow trunk of the old willow I could enter as a child in search of hidden secrets”.

Elsewhere, though, they resemble instead lungs or – though the Tate’s information booklet is strangely reticent in it’s failure to acknowledge this – female genitalia, often entwined with salvaged rope, like roots, or even intestines.

The evening I went to the private view (a perk of my Tate membership), it was almost empty, which added to the impact of the work.

Abakanowicz didn’t only work with textiles. Her last major commission was Agora, an installation of more than 100 headless iron sculptures displayed in Grant Park in Chicago.

The textiles on display at Tate are closer to enormous sculptures than ‘home crafts’, and Abakanowicz was making installation art well before that was a thing. With this show, as well as the work by Slovakian artist Maria Bartuszová also currently on display at Tate Modern, it feels that women artists are finally being given their due.

South African-influenced booze and food at Kudu in London

For my 49th (eek!) birthday a few weeks ago my husband and I had a lovely night out, with cocktails at Smokey Kudu in Peckham, South London, followed by a delicious meal at the nearby Kudu Grill (about a 10-minute walk away from the cocktail joint).

The cocktail menu was interesting, and I tried the Braai Negroni, as a negroni is my go-to drink (the house is generally full of Vermouth and gin as my husband’s a drinks writer). Here’s a flavour of some of the menu:

I was worried the Kudu Grill might be a bit meaty for me, as I don’t do red meat. I do do chicken though, and the poussin, with miso velouté and pickled daikon was delicious (even if the picture doesn’t do it justice).

The husband fancied the dry aged T-bone, beer pickled onions and treacle bordelaise, but it only came for two people, so he was forced to go for the monkfish, with green mazavaroo, caper and samphire, which he said was excellent.

My happy face afterwards in the very flatteringly-lit loos:

February Wrap-up/Plans for March

What I read

My reading slowed down in February, as life got in the way. I read a few books though: I finished and reviewed Marguerite Duras’s non-fiction book Practicalities, W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz for the Classics Club and Nanjala Nyabola’s Travelling while Black. I also read Banana Yoshimoto’s modern classic coming of age novella Kitchen as I continue to work my way slowly through the 1001 books list, and Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment, which was unexpectedly fascinating (review to come).

I read Michael Rosen’s just-published Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it and getting through it. I had high expectations of it, and found it a bit of a disappointment, as it was so simplistic, and felt like a bit of a mess. Impossible to not warm to Rosen though. Finally, I’ve been reading Salman Rushdie’s newly published Victory City on audio book. Another hot mess, but interesting enough to plod on with, its a sort of epic, fictionalized, irreverent history of India, which might resonate more if I knew anything about the history of India to start with. Written before his horrific near-fatal stabbing in August, as ever I’m impressed by Rushdie’s intellect (though so is he).

What I watched: Films and TV

In addition to reviewing Lithuanian film Pilgrims I watched Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s black comedy Triangle of Sadness, his first English-language film. It’s a satire of ultra-rich living that works really well, with a nice role for Woody Harrelson as the cruise ship’s alcoholic captain. I was sad though to learn that Charlbi Dean, the beautiful young actress and model who really shines as the film’s female lead, had died just before the film’s release.

Other than that I rewatched a couple of classic Japanese anime films with my kids (Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro – I could happily watch the uber-charming Totoro every week), watched brilliant 2019 high school comedy Booksmart with my youngest daughter and watched cheesy late ’80s Schwarzenegger vehicle The Running Man with my husband and the same daughter.

TV-wise, I’ve been watching Slow Horses season 2 on Apple TV – worth the subscription fee just for Gary Oldman’s hilariously revolting portrayal of washed-up British secret services man Jackson Lamb, as well as the UK comedy series Everybody Else Burns, set in a family of fundamentalist Christians, and the second season of Emmy-winning US comedy series Hacks.

Exhibitions

I went back to the Tate Modern with my youngest daughter for a GCSE art assignment, and reviewed the exhibition of work by Lithuanian artist M. K. Ciurlionis at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. I also wrote up my trip to the Lithuanian art installation/opera Sun & Sea in London last summer.

Plans for March

Plans for the month ahead include a focus on books, film and music from Ireland for Cathy’s annual Reading Ireland project, and reading the Welsh classic novel How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn for Paula’s reading Wales event.

Travelling while Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move by Nanjala Nyabola (Kenya)

Nanjala Nyabola didn’t leave Kenya till the age of 20, but since then she has travelled widely for both business and pleasure throughout the world, with the privileges that come with being an educated, middle-class African. However, this 2020 book by writer, political analyst, human rights activist and advocate Nyabola is not an account of her holidays – although it was nevertheless shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year in 2021.

Instead it is something of a polemic. Nyabola is perfectly placed to detail the inconsistencies that come with travelling as a Black woman. Warned off travelling to countries such as Burkina Faso and Haiti, she was able to ‘pass’ as a member of those societies, and see the behind the negative press (though Haiti has surely tipped much closer to being a failed state in the time since the visit she discusses in the book):

“The Otherness that led to racial abuse on the subway in New York … had given me an inroad that seemed inaccessible to my blan [white] colleagues … I was much more quickly able to access a Haiti that is warm and welcoming, rather than strange and fearful.“

And:

“My guidebooks, with all their warnings of violent thugs and itchy fingers, need their presumed readers to be afraid of Africa. They are written for people who have a significant amount of privilege and power, more than most of the people in the communities they plan to enter.”

Her smooth prose covers subjects as diverse as African literature – particularly the writing of Bessie Head, the failings towards desperate refugees of the EU’s Schengen Convention, and the varying manifestations of racism, not just in the West, but throughout the world.

In one discomfiting scene, as Nyabola observes desperate, shell-shocked refugees being unloaded from ships in the Italian port of Palermo, she becomes aware that she is “secretly and shamefully” concerned the security personnel might mistake her for a migrant. The book provides a critique of the inhumanity of Western politics and dismembers the cruelties of EU immigration policy.

This book was an erudite, thought-provoking and informative read, and ends with a plea to rethink prevailing views on migration:

“Travel has taught me that a different world is possible and even attainable, and that, even though the beast is large and its tentacles are long, there are enough of us to do something meaningful towards destroying it.“

Film review: Pilgrims (Lithuania, 2021)

I’m circling back to writing up the last of the Lithuania-related cultural events that I experienced last year, with a Lithuanian psychological thriller that I saw in October at the second London Baltic Film Festival, held at Riverside Studios. I could have watched several Baltic movies over the course of a weekend, but in the end only made it to only the one screening, which was followed by a Q&A with writer and director Laurynas Bareiša.

Pilgrims (Pilgrimai) is a gritty 92-minute film, which was screened in Lithuanian with English subtitles. It was shot during lockdown on a low budget, in and around a B&B that is featured in the film, and was selected to represent Lithuania in the Best International Feature Film category at the 2023 Oscars. It won the Orrizonti award for Best Film at the Venice Biennale in 2021.

The movie focuses on Paulius and Indre, who meet up again to re-examine the violent death four years before of Paulius’s brother Matas, who was also Indre’s boyfriend. The loss has inevitably tarnished both of their lives, and Paulius is determined to avenge his brother’s death. However, as he is physically hampered by a broken foot, Indre agrees to drive him out to the small town where Matas died. Gradually, the truth emerges as the pair revisit their past and confront their shared trauma. 

I couldn’t work out when the movie was set. There was an overwhelming sense of grey, and the characters had terrible clothes and distressing hair cuts. The palette was murky, and there were a few equally murky moments of humour, prompting some muted laughter from the audience at times. There was no soundtrack, no music to guide the story along, which added to the feeling of gritty realism and general discombobulation. Although the film clearly had a violent theme, thankfully none of that violence is shown on-screen.

The movie is emotionally restrained too. Although the director has spoken of his emotional connection with the concept of buried trauma, and buried crimes that fail to make a visible mark on their physical environment, the actually movie was stripped of feeling, at least until the end. This sense of detachment was an obstacle to my engagement with the story; at times it felt like a long car journey through the wet Lincolnshire fens in late autumn, which probably isn’t a great advert for anything.