When God Was A Rabbit – Sarah Winman

I like to be the person, in an annoying hipster fashion, who pegs the music, films and books that are going to be big, and based on the glowing feedback of various members of the blogosphere who all appeared to be in possession of pre-publication copies, this was my next prediction. I’ve been delayed in reading it because book reading seems to go out of the window during term-time, but once I started I finished it in a day.

This book is right up my alley–the kind of book I’d say I wish I had written, but that phrase always sounds patronising, but I honestly mean it: this kind of style is exactly the tone I want my novel to arrive at–a bit of family melodrama with a sweeping scope across years that lets the moments of the main character Elly’s life thread together into an affecting tapestry where history becomes personal mythology. I always find that sort of thing really satisfying–lost loves returning years later, stories finding their conclusions chapters later, hefting the weight of history. All that plus a nice streak of magic realism with the acerbic, titular rabbit.

For the most part, the characters are quirky and engaging. Some reviewers have suggested that there are no characters with a sense of realism, but that’s something else I’ve never minded; fiction should be about the extraordinary. Joe, Elly’s brother, has been accused of being a bit cold by some readers, but there’s something about a gay character that always sparks my interest, and whilst I found the post midpoint Joe a little hard to sympathise with, the foundations were there that he was at least understandable. Most importantly, the subtle shadings of the teen Joe rang true to me; other readers found the ring of recognition in the cultural trappings, but for me I found them in moments of Joe’s story.

My biggest criticism is that the first half of the novel, from the young (though oddly eloquent–suspension of disbelief is a powerful thing) Elly’s point of view is so entrancing that the mid-book jump to the twenty-something Elly is jarring and disappointing, leaving me with the feeling of a friend leaving the party early just when I was hoping they’d go on for a few hours more. In a way, the second half never quite recovers, the adult perspectives meaning there is somehow less sparkle and quirk to the whole thing. The second half is when things start to come into harsh focus, culminating in the harrowing 9/11 sequence. And this was the problem: the rose tint was gone, and somehow it wasn’t as interesting, and I felt myself nostalgic for the young Elly. I’m presenting it as a compliment for the strength of the first half, though. And, without revealing spoilers, I was genuinely upset by the unconventional disappearance of a character. And whilst I’ve never been one for happy endings, I felt a little shortchanged by the ending.

That being said, on the whole, I genuinely loved this book. Winman’s ability to see-saw between the tragic and the light is superb, mirroring the natural rhythms of life, and allows for the leavening of the darker elements of the plot that wind in amongst the narrative. I would also like to credit Winman with the brilliance of the visual image of a sex scene between drag-Liza and a Womble which made me grin wildly. Can’t wait for that one in the inevitable BBC adaptation.

Verdict: Despite the comparative flatness of the second half, overall I loved this novel. I read it three days ago, and I’ve been letting it gestate in my mind to see whether it’s going to slot into my favourites list. I think it probably does.

Katintheattic Strikes

This looks infinitely better in a frame on my wall, but this is katintheattic’s very belated Christmas present for me.

I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues…

This term feels like it has dragged on and on—I am beyond exhausted. The week’s holiday in Tenerife was perfect, and for a brief few days at the end I was convinced, as happens once every couple of months or so, that I would go back to school, work hard and be an awesome inspiration. Except, two days back into the new half term, this is well out of the window. I can’t stand teaching at the minute; every day is a drudge, full of paperwork and insecurity, and so much marking that I literally can’t fathom the concept of reaching the bottom of it. The spark has gone, and I feel like every day I am delivering mediocre lessons to kids that couldn’t care less. Which is not to say there aren’t moments, but they are so few and far between that it feels like it isn’t worth it at the minute.

Thank God for Marika—I’d be drowning otherwise. I was briefly inspired when I went touring the East Manchester Academy, which was incredible. They cared about the kids, and the kids cared about them. Unfortunately, I royally fucked up the lesson and didn’t make it to the interview. And since then I really just, plain and simple, do not want to be a teacher. I can’t seem to drum up the motivation to apply elsewhere, and have even gone as far as looking for a different occupation. Worse, the kids now know that I’m leaving, which lead to an interrogative Year Ten lesson whereby I was lambasted for lying to them when I said I wasn’t leaving, and dodgy territory trying to avoid the question of “where are you going to?”—feels like very insecure ground.

On the flip side of that, I am now, completely and officially, an out gay teacher, and am quite proud of it. It was a bit underwhelming in the end—and there have been some interesting reactions. One pupil I would not really have expected much of a mature response from told someone off from asking questions, saying “Well, it’s not really any of our business, is it?” and, more amusingly, another Year 10 expressed irritation and not being able to persuade another pupil that it was true. I had an entertaining lunchtime with a few of my form in detention—it wasn’t supposed to be entertaining, it was a failure of a detention—but I had to counter Marika’s implication that I was her ex who was desperate for her to love me again by clarifying the situation, and ended up having an intriguing conversation with them. For a bunch of Year 7s, they are very clear and very accepting in their views—it was surprisingly refreshing. In the end, I’ve sort of discovered there isn’t as much soapboxing as I expected.

Even my words have dried up; this is a horrendously staid blog post. Urgh.

So… good, but mostly bad. Teaching, go away. I want a new job.

The Day I Became A Shadow -and- The Tree That Wanted To Be…

In a bid to remind myself that I do actually enjoy teaching, I’ve did some writing to use in lessons. First up is The Tree That Wanted To Be, which I wrote for a job interview in which the subject I was given was “Environment and Renewability.” We read the story together and pupils had to write their own four step version of the story. There were some great versions in my test-runs–my favourite being the tree that became a fertiliser and was used to nourish a new forest. Sadly, in the interview I didn’t get as far as the writing, and totally screwed the lesson up. They were very complimentary about the story in the feedback though. Read it here.

Secondly, The Day I Became A Shadow is based on a story Marika told me about how when Hiroshima was bombed, some people and objects were literally vaporised by the blast, leaving only a shadow behind. I don’t entirely understand the science, but I love the bleak poetry of it, and I decided that my Year 7s needed a good sombre lesson. I prefaced it with a starter on what they would do if the world ended in 24 hours. I had tears–it was great. Be aware, this is somewhat heavy handed–it was designed to teach foreshadowing and dramatic irony. With a shovel. Read it here.

Four Line poem

Listen–the clamour of the innocents
To be unburdened
Whilst the burdened watch and yearn
For the beauty of simplicity.

One Year

At first he was the study door
In the shadowed corner of the hall
Where once I crept
When I should have slept
The adventures between my own four walls
Hemmed in by carpet roads, rehearsed and small
But spying on a grown-up world
I imagined adventures bloom and unfurl
Behind the shaded study door.
On Friday evenings he was a son,
Cilla and the Street playing on
Grandma’s television, our weekly dose
Of cinema glamour, carefully vetted,
Drip fed, lest we became enamoured
And it led us down the garden path.
Sometimes he was a schoolboy, shipped away
To boarding school, mother’s boy unable to
even behead a boiled egg.
Sometimes he was the storyteller, spinning stories
Of the slipper at dawn, and greens tipped away
Of stealing treats for Matron’s time.
Polished up with boys-own pride,
The tales thronged like a clamouring class
Of boys in short trousers, blazers and socks to the knees,
left to embroider behind the eyes
of the treacle teddy, gone from head on a pillow
to displayed in a case.
In other news, Bulgy Bear was found
Prowling the woods, and cavorting around.
In the foliage of nouns I found my own kind of fame
Enter hero, happening to bear my own name.
Yesterdays glories
Slipped into new morning’s stories,
Brought to judgement before the beak
While the car horns toot and the treehouses creaks.
A generation later I’m yesterdays hero,
Grandchildren shrugging on the mantle.
Once upon a time Bulgy tapped into print,
Looking toothless and lost, half-complete
How could cold white paper ever receive
The spirit of sunlight and wrapped up duvets
That filled in the spaces as the stories were weaved.
Sometimes he brought the morning: plain mug of tea
Vivid in colour, insipid in taste,
Sipped from slumber, then left to go cold.
Sometimes he was a poet, metred memos
and sonnet form faxes. In a dusty folder
on a shelf is a psalm: it’s broken in the middle.
Sometimes he brought the night: a whispering
Close to the ear, a tickle on the edge of sleep
The colour of a comfort blanket.
Sometimes he was the supposed playboy:
In every city as we drew near,
he’d say “I used to have a girlfriend here.”
My mother rolls her eyes, tuts patiently:
After all, she got him in the end,
Her name on the letters arriving at the hands of a friend,
In the watches of the nurse’s night,
In London–the big smoke–when the world was black and white.
These are stories: for to a primary mind
How can there be any names but ‘Dad’?

Sometimes he was a businessman; I rode the coat-tails
Sneaked the Famous Five from his ten per cent,
Became a proud production line,
green into white,
green into white,
green into white,
And on Sunday afternoons I squinted at taped together pages
as he mangled the Latin, and pasted my name into history.
His half was a box of close-printed words:
Quarter folio; fly leaf; half back; joints cracked;
At fifty pence per page.
Every half a decade or so,
The walls would bulge with books,
The house would grow and grow,
As rows of books assembled, shuffling their dusty feet,
Waiting to be tied up into brown paper packages
Par avion, away to meet
Their next caretaker,
Next big seller.
Sometimes we dreamed: awoke in the morning
Without the treasures we’d claimed
From a bookshop behind the eyelids.
Sometimes he was a judge: one to ten, country and song,
Radio Two piping Eurovision into our living room.
Only the radio: at the end of the day
It’s about the music, not dancing, he’d always say.
Sometimes he was a preacher, a Tuesday night occurence
Latin swapped for thumb-blackened college Bible,
A study wrapped in thick silence; an echo
of a study door from years before.
I’ve been told he was excellent, but rarely enticed
to appear; I’ve been told he was nervous,
But I never noticed.
On a Monday I try, tying my inherited tie,
To decide if my nerves are the same.
Sometimes he was the trickster: quick swift double cross
Look over there, and
switch!
an empty place setting.
Beneath the glasses banned from removal
The cleaner faced down a ball-point grimace.
Sometimes he was a sailor, but his boats
Sailed safely only carpet.
After all: everything (sailing, drinking, breathing, walking, flying, holidaying,
everything) is
DANGEROUS.

Sometimes he was a donkey
(only in voice)
(only to grandchildren)

I heard stories: a note in a biscuit tin: dread.
Yet when he told me he felt he hadn’t earned respect from me as a child
I had no answer.

And when, head turned on hospital pillows, he told me
“In the end, this is all life is…”
I had no answer.

Brian Jacques

I was sad to hear of the passing of Brian Jacques on February 5th of this month. I’ve read a few other people’s blog posts on the subject, and it seems that for many people the Redwall series was many people’s first ‘real’ book. For me, that honour is taken by any of the Enid Blyton series (it may not be the first I ever read, but The Mystery of the Secret Room has always stuck with me.) However, Redwall was a mainstay of my childhood reading.

The Redwall series are unlike anything else I’ve ever read–they’re full of adventure, riddles, evil villains, and brave young novices who wind up saving the abbey. They were all out swashbucklers, and they created a vivid world. I remember being as happy reading the sections of the story where everything was happy, and the Abbey was ticking along, having another feast as when the adventures were happening. One of the best things about the series used to be the food–a stupid thing to pick up, I know, but Jacques always seemed to go out of his way to always list the myriad food that was being cooked and (despite the fact that the concoctions are probably quite disgusting) they always sounded delicious. I also used to love the Abbey Recorder, who often started and finished the books. At one point when I was about nine I embarked on the (ambitious but doomed) task of re-creating the complete Abbey records. It seems a ridiculous thing to have tried to do now, but I remember wanting to have a part in writing the world of Mossflower. In fact, as I’m writing this, I’m remembering that at one point, possibly a few years later than nine, I created a radio play in which I acted and sung (!) all the parts, based on a Winter Feast in Redwall Abbey. It probably still exists on cassette tape somewhere. The more I think back, the more I’m realising how much the Redwall series was responsible for the start of so many of the stories I wrote as a child.

It used to say in the ‘about the author’ sections of the books that Brian Jacques wrote his stories in the garden on a typewriter. That’s the kind of books Redwall are: reassuringly traditional, in the best way possible. When I was young, my dad bought my an old battered typewriter, and that’s what I used to write my stories on too. I think that line in the ‘about the author’ made me feel less old-fashioned and odd, and more like a real writer.

There doesn’t seem to be as much love going around for his other books though–sadly they often go unnoticed. I liked Castaways of the Flying Dutchman alot. Shortly after reading them, my mum took me to Beamish, an open-air museum in the North of England where the town has been restored to 1950s glory. It felt great, like walking into a book, full of the kind of old world charm that Brian Jacques was so good at creating.

I own a complete set of all of Brian Jacques’ books, but I have to admit I haven’t read them all. Somewhere in the middle of secondary school I started to feel like I had outgrown them, and stopped reading. I feel oddly guilty about this now. My mum used to read them too though, so we still bought them. When I went to uni, despite never really planning to read them, I used to find myself buying each new Redwall book when I saw them. The complete set (organised in chronological order I’ll have you know!) are the only books left on the bookcases in my old childhood bedroom. They’re still there because I have an eleven-year-old nephew. Every time he comes to visit, he returns two, and leaves with another pair of Redwall books (or so I’ve been told.)

So I guess that proves it: Redwall will live on. Here’s to you, Mr. Jacques. Thank you for the wonderful memories.