When I feel good, I like to try a new book. I am building up to reading Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise in French. At the moment however, I am reading the appendices to The Lord of the Rings – hopefully the blue spell won’t last long enough to tackle the actual story.
The appendices are a good thing, as you can get close enough to the characters and the plot without actually having to connect with the whole story proper. No such luck with the lovely Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh – have lost count of how many times I’ve read this, or with Memoirs of a Geisha. I should be more adventurous but there is nothing more reassuring than renewing a friendship with a fictional character. Over time your relationship to them and opinion changes depending on your own circumstances. My mother succinctly summed this up vis a vis her own relationship with Mrs Bennett from Pride and Prejudice: “I really found her odious as a teenager but as I grew up and had a daughter of my own I though what else could she do for the best for her girls in that era.” This shows the fluidity of our own opinions, while the essence of our souls remains the same. To quote my Mum again – “No matter how many times I read it, I still thought Madame Bovary was a silly bitch!”
Life, the cooking and anything else.
