With temperatures falling and the evenings drawing in we felt it was the ideal time to get back into our movie going this week and, we've done that with a vengeance. We started with Frank at Little Lightning here in Framlingham which I wrote about in my last blog and we followed it up with Pride at the Aldeburgh Cinema on Tuesday evening.
It's one of those quintessentially English movies such as Bold As Brass andThe Full Monty which centres on a working community fallen upon hard times (usually due to the wicked Margaret Thatcher) but brought together by a mutual passion (brass band, strip act and now the miner's strike/gay and lesbian rights). It tells the fascinating true story of how a group of LGBT men and women, tired of being victimised, decided to show solidarity with another victimised group by openly supporting and collecting money for a mining community in Wales during the notorious 1984/5 industrial action.
The film centres on the prejudice of both those that the gay group is trying to support and the community in general and it is funny and heartwarming even if a little predictable. In a very standard three act formula we open with the Pride march in London, move to Wales and close back in London with the following year's Pride march. In between there is plenty of comedy based mostly upon the open mindedness of elderly Welsh women (Imelda Staunton in particular) and gender confusion within the mining community. For me the highlight was a scene in the working mens' club when the flamboyant Jonathan played by Dominic West takes the audience by storm with an outrageous dance routine that brings the house down. It was good to see Bill Nighy playing against his usual type as an elderly Welsh union official and also good to see George MacKay's career continuing to flourish after his promising roles in Sunshine On Leith and Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now.
After Aldeburgh on Tuesday it was Woodbridge yesterday afternoon when we went to see The Grand Seduction a gentle Canadian film which reminded me of Local Hero. A young doctor is coerced into staying in Tickle Head, a tiny Newfoundland fishing community which must have a doctor if the inhabitants are to stand any chance of winning the bid to be chosen as the location for a major new factory. Whilst major new factories (especially in the petro-chemical industry) and beautiful coastal communities make strange bedfellows, the fishermen are out of work and on benefits due to quotas and industrialisation of the industry and want alternative jobs to maintain their dignity.
The humour in this film, which is gentler than that in Pride, centres around the community's duplicity, lead by the mayor (Brendan Gleeson), in trying to persuade cricket loving doctor (Taylor Kitsch) that, despite his fiancee thousands of miles away and his city loving ways, Tickle Head is the place of his dreams and to convince the city slickers that their tiny place has over two hundred residents AND a doctor. Although their methods are, to say the least, questionable, the message is that anything goes if it is for the good of the workers. The result is an enjoyable and entertaining 115 minutes of whimsy which, slightly puzzlingly, both opens and closes to the sound of orgasms throughout the harbour side houses and the implication that all is very fine in the world as long as everybody is enjoying conjugal harmony. Which may, I suppose, not be too wide of the mark.
Interesting to see in ITV's I Married The Waiter the other night that no less than three of the women involved in the programme had met their loves on the wonderful Greek island of Symi which is, of course, the loosely fictionalised Symos of my romantic novel.
A fellow blogger and metal detecting enthusiast John Winter (you can find his excellent blog down there on the right) asked me the other day if I read mostly female authors. I can understand him thinking this as I've recently reviewed books by Caroline Smailes, Ann Weisberger, Nicola May,Talli Roland, Meg Rosoff and Rachel Joyce on this blog. But in the last twelve months my favourite books have also included Pigeon English, The White Tiger, We The Drowned, Florence And Giles and Homer And Langley all of which were written by men. And by pure coincidence, both the novels I read this week have male authors.
I've grumbled so often about the lack of funny books that I started to wonder if I had lost my sense of humour. All the "I nearly wet myself ", "tears were streaming down my face" and "I almost died laughing" quotes on the fronts and backs of novels might muster a glimmer of a smile at best. There's one author on Twitter who, almost every day, quotes that a famous comic found his book hilarious - it's a pleasant enough read but he got me to buy it under false pretences.
Well, finally, here's one that does exactly what it says on the tin (that would get the narrator's back up).
Driving Jarvis Ham by Jim Bob opens with "Would you drink a pint of your own piss?", a brilliant line but one that might deter the more sensitive reader. But, sensitive reader - any reader, I urge you to proceed beyond this and the increasingly gross challenges that Jarvis and our narrator are discussing in one of their "in car" games and enjoy an extremely funny tale of a childhood friendship that came about one day at school and continued for the next thirty years. Jarvis is a Princess Diana obsessive, wannabe actor, wannabe pop star, wannabe anything famous. He's got none of the attributes that might give him even a smidgeon of a chance to realise those dreams - his classmates called him "balloon head", he can't sing and he can't act but somehow, our narrator, his only friend, sticks with him and indulges him with lifts to his no hope auditions and am-dram flops.
Something more sinister lurks beneath Jarvis' loser existence as the novel develops through a clever combination of diaries and other mementos some discovered by his friend, some written by him. I love the friendly narrative conversational style. There are also some brilliant illustrations that alone would justify a "laugh out loud" quote on the back (although there are more than enough laughs even without them). Our narrator earns a living writing funny one-liners for Christmas crackers, fortune cookies and church posters (ruining my long held belief that the vicar at our local Methodist church must be Southport's funniest man) and he relates the story with wonderful humour and style. Do read it - if you buy the electronic edition you even get four free songs by Jim Bob to download and enjoy.
Having finally found one very funny book it would be too much to ask to read another in the same week wouldn't it but Michael Frayn's Skios is just that - a very funny book. Nikki is busily organising a big event for a charitable foundation on a beautiful Greek island. Fifty something Dr Norman Wilfred is flying there to make the keynote speech whilst handsome young chancer Oliver Fox is also on his way to the island to take advantage of a sexy woman in a villa he's managed to cadge for a week from friends of his wealthy not quite ex-girlfriend. All the classic characters are in place for a farce.
And what a farce develops! When Oliver discovers that his conquest has missed her plane and spots Nikki at the airport waiting for Dr Wilfred it's an opportunity he can't resist and what follows is a delightful concoction of mixed up luggage, mistaken identity and wrong bedrooms against a backdrop of sunshine, shady politicians and some other dark goings on on the hillside. It's a credit to Michael Frayn that he has managed to put together what is effectively a theatrical farce into a novel and he has pulled it off quite perfectly right down to the minor characters that no farce would be complete without - in this case brothers Spiros and Stavros from Skios Taxis and their catchphrase "thirty two euros".
So that's two very different and very funny books in a week. Whilst a lot of Driving Jarvis Ham 's humour is in the writing and Skios' laughs come from the absurd situation both are hugely enjoyable reads.
I've got The Red House by Mark Haddon (another male author please note) to read now before starting on Middlesex for Scott Pack's book club experiment later in the week (see the link to the meandmybigmouth blog over on the right)
Although Flo's death caused huge upheaval over the last few weeks and a tremendous sense of loss, life must go on after bereavement so we've come to Scotland for a few days to see Sarah, Duncan and Rose. I know that everyone thinks that their own grandchildren are the best in the world but Rose gives us good reason to feel like that - she's such a happy child; she raises everybody's sprits whenever she is around. It won't be long before she's walking and talking now and I'm so pleased that we've been able to see so much of her development despite our living almost three hundred miles away.
And speaking of raising the spirits, I read The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler yesterday. What a lovely book. Strangely enough it is about bereavement although I didn't know that when I started reading - I just went to the first of the books that Marion has downloaded recently on the Kindle and started on page one without checking any of the blurb. It's the story of socially inept thirty something Aaron who loses his wife and how he copes with the aftermath of her death. It's beautifully written - a perfect lesson on the "showing not telling" that writers are encouraged to develop and I loved the way that the book dripped tiny snippets of information and finally gathered them all together into a very satisfying end. A very charming book that was just my cup of tea.
I am afraid to say that Meg Rosoff's There Is No Dog was exactly the opposite. I started reading it just before Flo died and instead of finishing in my usual day or two it took over two weeks which may not have helped with the flow. However, having loved Just In Case by the same author so much, I was expecting another excellent read but I'm afraid that, despite the glowing reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, I just couldn't take to this story about God as a teenage boy with his weird, muppet-like, pet Eck. I don't know if I was in the wrong frame of mind but, despite a fascinating concept, it did nothing for me so it's not recommended, if I were to review it on Amazon I'd be giving it one star but I don't do nasty reviews on Amazon as I know that I wouldn't like them if my book ever got out there.
We went to see The Hunger Games at FACT last Wednesday. I know that it has been a smash hit but it didn't live up to our expectations. There's another great performance from the eminently watchable Jennifer Lawrence and plenty of twists in the plot but we both felt that it dragged a bit and, at almost two and a half hours long, could have done with being trimmed.
We loved The Kid With A Bike though. The story of an elven year old boy abandoned by his dad but fostered by the lovely and saintly local hairdresser played by Cecile de France it is a charming study of a child growing up and trying to accept that his blood relations don't want him, the effect that it has on his behaviour and the repairs that can be made by being wanted. It's a much edgier film than I had been led to believe by the headlines but beneath the delinquency of young Cyril there is a yearning for acceptance and charm in the way that he ultimately achieves it.
I've read three male teenage 'rites of passage' novels in the last couple of months; four if you count Pigeon English. The Rotters Club and Skippy Dies were written by men whereas Just In Case was written by a woman and there's a very clear difference in the way in which the authors handle the turbulence of male adolescence. Having experienced it myself (admittedly many moons ago), I feel that Meg Rosoff has created in Justin a very real and far more sensitive character than the norm and this book is so much better for it.
A teenager with a telepathic understanding of his toddler brother Charlie, a conviction that fate is about to send him to an early grave and an imaginary greyhound as a pet would never find high school plain sailing and it is little surprise that Justin finds himself on the periphery of his circle of schoolmates. When an older girl - a photographer - spots his haunted looks and exploits them to advance her career our hero's teenage angst is cranked up to the maximum.
It's a highly original and unusual novel. Justin is a fascinating creation. His story is told with page turning pace and gentle humour and I am happy to give it five stars.
