La Maison sans Racines - Andrée Chedid

Andrée Chedid died in Paris in March 2011, aged 90.  She was essentially a French writer, though her family is originally Lebanese, and Egyptian.  She herself was born in Egypt, brought up to speak English and French and Arabic, but lived in France from 1946.  
This novel is set just before the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975, and is written around a single incident - two young women, one Christian, one Muslim wearing a yellow scarf to symbolise hope, meet in the centre of a square. A shot rings out - one of them falls to the ground, and Kalya, a grandmother, approaches the two of them.   Intertwined with this key incident, which is told in short two  or three page bursts, are two longer stories, which give it a factual and emotional context.  The first, set in 1932, concerns a holiday Kalya spent as a child with her grandmother Nouza.  In the second, Kalya, herself now a grandmother who lives in Paris, is spending a holiday in Beirut with her own (nine-year-old?) grand-daughter, Sybil, who lives in New York.  


A mix of cultures, times and lives that encompasses much of the twentieth century Middle East, but through the close family relationships, and filtered through the cultures of the West as well.


The ending is shocking, but logical, and the book ends with a symbol of hope - the scarf floating.


(still in progress)

Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord - Louis de Bernières

A strange book - social criticism, politics, magical realism - I may have to read it again before making any more comments. Late night drifting doesn't really do it justice.

I've just checked it out on Wikipedia (link in title of this post) and discovered that it is the second of a trilogy. One of the risks of picking up a book second-hand and just reading it!  I hadn't realised Bernieres had lived in Colombia.

Les Valseuses

I'm afraid I didn't watch more than the first few minutes, in spite of the big names - Depardieu, Jeanne Moreau among them.
Made in the 70s it shows two obnoxious young blokes causing mayhem - stealing cars, mistreating women etc.  Supposedly very subversive according to some, but a bit too unpleasant to watch.

Outnumbered

I always start watching this and think I'll stop after ten minutes, but carry on regardless. One of the funniest sitcom things I've seen recently.

Until the episode where the obligatory suspicion of a drunken kiss took over for a little too long...

Carmen in Leeds

I should have written about this in February when we saw it!  A very enjoyable experience, although some of the reviews I read afterwards were less than overwhelming!  It was set in Seville, Ohio - though that didn't matter, and did explain the soldiers' costumes.  Sung in French, of course...but still felt pretty Hispanic to me.

Shelters of Stone - Jean Auel

Good in parts, repetitive in parts - especially the mystical sequences and the song of the Earth's Mother.

I enjoyed the earlier ones, this was ok, but I've read many poor reader reviews of her latest - Land of Painted Caves - and I'm afraid they have put me off buying it.

What's this book?

Another book I read while away in the New Forest.

Starts with a girl about ten (?) running away from home in London, so that she can't be evacuated to the countryside during WW2.  She meets a young man called Sam (?).  Her grandfather (William) was a famous actor in a nearby theatre.  She is raised by her grandfather and his Scottish sister -in-law, after her mother's death.  The mother  committed suicide in front of a bus after apparently being deserted by an Italian boyfriend.  It later turns out that he didn't know she was pregnant. He appears later on, is from Florence.[I think he brings her a present he has made - though I could be confusing this with another book - Glassblower of Murano?]

She's unimpressed at the time, but later goes to Italy.   Oh yes, he dies in a convent - she sees him not long before his death.

There's also a woman who makes costumes who is a surrogate mother, and acts as a fairy godmother financing her studies, under the pretence of money from the girl's father.

For  a while she is involved with a suave successful actor, who can't cope with real life, and has lost himself in the characters he plays.

The protagonist ends up as a scenery painter, and costume designer, and works with Sam.  Romance, of course.

All very bitty and I can't recall author, character names, title, publisher...anything!