The Arctic Circle is very popular all of a sudden.
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huskyteer has lived up in Swedish Lapland with the huskies. I sometimes visit the lovely blog
Dances with Wool. Now I’ve been reading
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida. I bought this on the strength of a newspaper review, then by coincidence it was Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime.
When Clarissa’s father dies, she sees her birth certificate for the first time. He was not her father; the name on the certificate is that of a Sami priest. Clarissa is a very angry young woman. Angry with her dead father and her fiancé, angry with the mother who also lied to her and deserted the family. Like mother, like daughter: Clarissa too disappears without a word to anyone and heads for Finnish Lapland. The further north she goes, the further into her own past and the worse things get, descending into an hallucinatory nightmare of illness and bewilderment. Is it possible to escape the past? The style is spare, almost terse, yet there is a wonderful feel of this northern place and its people.
Next up, The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, set in frozen Canada.
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It’s about time I wrote some more about books. I am romping away with Selina Hastings’ biography of Evelyn Waugh. At the beginning of this book she says that there is room for three biographies: the memoir by a personal friend, the academic one and the general narrative. I’ve already read the Christopher Sykes and Martin Stannard biographies but unaccountably not this ‘general’ one. Although almost everything about Waugh’s life offends my lower middle class sensibilities I still find it endlessly fascinating. I think it’s because out of snobbishness, bad behaviour and what he himself called ‘disgusting drunkenness’ came dedication, craftsmanship and supreme wit. This book reads as easily as a novel: it’s terrific. ( Read more... )
