Week 4 add-on: The Faerie Queene

As promised in my post detailing my thoughts on Week 4 of the reading challenge (which you can find here), here's my review (with plenty of analysis) on The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. I read the first canto of the first of the poem's six books for the purposes of the reading challenge, but I'm keen to read more. As part of the post last week, I gave you a *really* condensed form of this review, so lap it up in all its unabridged glory! I'll be back on Sunday with a similarly unabridged review/analysis of G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, which I also read as part of Week 4 of the Banquet of Books Reading Challenge - see you then!


*** THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR "THE FAERIE QUEENE" BY EDMUND SPENSER ***

I began the week tucking into an allegorical work (a text which functions on multiple levels by virtue of its literal and subtextual meanings) - I chose Edmund Spenser's famed epic poem The Faerie Queene. Intended to be subdivided into twelve books, each consisting of multiple cantos, this truly deserves the label of epic; Book I follows the adventures of the knight Redcrosse and his companion Una, who discover a mystical Faerie Land, a series of 'pathes and alleies wide' hidden within 'a shadie grove'. Perhaps this collection of fantasy tropes was already a common recipe by the time Spenser was writing, at the tail end of the 16th century, but the deep layers of allegory ensure its singularity - and hey, there's 'a dragon horrible and stearne' in it, too! I'll admit that a series of confusing introductory sonnets and epigraphs made me anxious that the poem might be utterly incomprehensible, but in fact, its deliberate orthographical archaisms never preclude its easy readability. Put simply – it’s a cracking read.

First, attention needs to be drawn to Spenser’s deeply moral – yet never explicitly didactic – tone, in which the characters’ behaviour leaves lessons for the reader to take. With the poet admitting in an introduction that ‘The general end… of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’, the reader is primed for anodyne lectures about morals, but in fact Spenser guides the reader to make inferences about which characters best represent good conduct. Immediately any possible expectations of bloodthirstiness or cruelty in the knight Redcrosse are quelled by his introduction as ‘a gentle knight’ who ‘armes till that time did he never wield’ – he is the perfect picture of honour, ‘valiant’, ‘bold’ and ‘fearefull more of shame/Then of the certeine peril he stood in’. His former Lord is ‘dead as living ever ador’d’ – he is loyal even after the death of the person to whom he is loyal – and his companion Una recognises he has ‘great glory wonne’.

In places, Spenser’s characterisation of the knight serves a dual purpose, both evincing his unquestionable virtue and expounding the belief that a person is not tarnished forever by one immoral action. This is shown towards the end of the first canto, when Redcrosse is made to dream of ‘wanton blis and wicked joy’ – an expression of the vice of lust – however, soon after the dream begins ‘he started up, as seeming to mistrust/Some secret ill, or hidden foe of his’, thereby resisting succumbing fully to this vice. However, this vice-virtue rollercoaster ride doesn’t stop there, as he wakes up to see ‘his ladie [the person about whom he had this lusty dream]… Under blacke stole’ and is ‘dismayd to see so uncouth sight,/And halfe enraged at her shamelesse guise’ – something so simple as the juxtaposition between his perceptions of Una in the erotic dream and in the innocent flesh incites him to consider killing her. Surely we are to regard this quickness to anger as a vice? Yet, Redcrosse ‘stayde his hand’, seeing better of his hastiness, and so Spenser teaches us that restraint is perhaps the best of all virtues.

This is not our first indication that Redcrosse isn’t perfect – Spenser injects verisimilitude into this fantastical tale to more effectively and convincingly convey to readers that nobody is without vice. When read through contemporary eyes, the knight’s complete lack of regard for the warnings and advice of his companion Una may even seem misogynistic – and it proves his first flaw within the narrative. The poet relates Una’s advice to her companion when they approach a cave that she knows to be the home of the vile dragon Erroure – she advises ‘“Be well aware… Least suddaine mischief ye too rash provoke’” and warns about ‘“a monster vile, whom God and man does hate’”. And what do you know? He only goes and provokes the bloody dragon and has to fight for his life. In my view, the fact that this disregard for others’ advice clearly fits into the theme of loneliness and company that’s like the glue binding the first canto together… but more on that later!

It’s doubly significant that it’s Una who goes ignored by Redcrosse, because this is regrettably the only moment in the first canto where Spenser portrays a woman as anything approximating a normal thinking, feeling woman. Perhaps excused by the context of the contemporary role of the almost worthless woman, the poet writes Una as a cipher; whilst we learn about Redcrosse’s moral qualities and his status as a brave knight, we learn nothing of Una’s character, and instead only are told that she is ‘lovely’, ‘faire’, ‘much whiter [than snow]’ (the Elizabethan beauty ideal) and ‘so pure and innocent’. Beautiful and unspoiled, in other words. Unfortunately, this description is consistent with Spenser’s disappointing portrayal of the feminine elsewhere in the poem – women are either figures of extreme distracting beauty (‘O Goddesse heavenly bright,/Mirrour of grace and majestie divine’) or exceedingly hideous (the aforementioned dragon’s ‘other halfe did womans shape retaine,/Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine’ – unless I’m reading it wrong, this is the woman half, NOT the dragon half, that’s being described as filthy and foul!), and Una’s brief moment of common sense aside (and her warning to Redcrosse has possibly only been included so that Spenser can introduce the idea that nobody’s perfect by having Redcrosse ignore this advice), she mostly swans about fawning over the knight, confessing ‘“Love of your selfe…/Lets me not sleepe, but waste the wearie night/In secret anguish’”. Still, that’s 1590 talking, I suppose.

Another of the themes of The Faerie Queene appears to be the idea of ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and it’s handled with some spectacular shock reveals. Kindly wizened old man Archimago, ‘voide of malice bad’, living in ‘A litle lowly hermitage’, is really an evil sorcerer who ‘seekes out mighty charmes, to trouble sleepy minds’?! He who ‘all the way… prayed as he went’ wiles away his nights ‘[speaking] reprochful shame/Of highest God’?! The theme reintroduces itself more explicitly in a little moment of visual humour when Archimago ‘made a lady of that other spright’, literally dressing up a mythical goblin-type creature as a convincing woman. The dramatic irony generated from this theme is electric, and helps to convey the mythical, fantastical Faerie Land setting, whilst also linking to the prevalent themes of secrecy and the loneliness it sparks. All of the poem’s antagonists so far live in seclusion, with the dragon ‘wont in desert darkness to remaine/Where plain none might her see', the figure who laid waste to Una’s country ‘in wastfull wildernesse’, Archimago ‘downe in a dale…/Far from resort of people’ and the god Morpheus ‘where dawning day doth never peepe’. And, of course, this all takes place in a hidden world. I’m half tempted to argue that this secrecy is just window-dressing to hammer home the fantastical atmosphere of the setting and to create intrigue, but this decision does also offer an insight into the psychology of a villain – the dragon Erroure, we are specifically told, does not want other people to see her, and it’s implied in the case of Archimago too. With secrecy comes loneliness, something which Spenser is adamant is a negative factor. As well as all these villains living solitary lives (could Spenser be making a deliberate link here?), as the poet summarises in his introduction to the poem, Una’s ‘father and mother… had bene by a huge dragon many years shut up’, and in Book II a palmer arrives ‘bearing an infant… whose parents he complained to have bene slayn by an enchaunteresse’ – in both cases, evil (and remember how keen Spenser is for this poem to clearly represent virtue vs. vice) manifests itself by separating child from parents, by making its victims feel lonely. As I mentioned earlier, the knight Redcrosse tries to manage without the input of others, and suffers harsh retribution. The idea of the power of kinship and company has been central, so far, to the Faerie Queene.

And what of the titular queen herself? Spenser is a very sycophantic poet, clearly desperate for that £50 per year pension he earned for the poem (though it’s doubtful Elizabeth ever read it) – he begins with an achingly long dedication to the sovereign, and puts the patriotism front and centre by rendering Elizabeth as ‘that greatest glorious queene of Faery Land’, whose grace ‘of all earthly things [the knight] most did crave’. As if the patriotism hadn’t been evidenced enough, the wonderful noble knight is called Redcrosse! However, if we’re taking Redcrosse to represent England, riding high after its victory against the Spanish Armada concurrent with Spenser beginning to write the poem, consider the knight’s imperfections, as mentioned above, and some nascent criticism of the system begins to suggest itself, very faintly. Whilst Elizabeth gets a flattering portrayal so far, elsewhere, power is presented as a bad thing – Una’s parents, the old king and queen, ‘all the world in their subjection held’, but an ‘infernall feend… forwasted all their land’. Here, the repetition of ‘all’ seems to convey the transience and pointlessness of power, if the king and queen, so certain in their power, enjoying command over ‘all the world’, can in one fell swoop see ‘all their land’ be destroyed. Power has no beneficial effects on the king and queen – in the past, ‘their scepters strecht from east to western shore’ – absolute power – but now they languish as prisoners in a castle. Every character in the poem so far has been ascribed an immense amount of power – Una and her family being royalty, Erroure being a ferocious beast, Archimago possessing magical powers – and Redcrosse’s power is  shown by his conduct to the only powerless figure so far. Did I mention that Redcrosse and Una are also accompanied by a dwarf? Nope, that’s how little he means to the plot! At one point, Redcrosse ‘to the dwarfe a while his needless spere gave’ – whilst Redcrosse is so confident in his abilities that he can go without a ‘needless’ weapon, the dwarf is reduced to being a servant who is only trusted to carry things for ‘a while’. Where Spenser presents power as dangerous is when these powerful characters clash, such as in Redcrosse and Una’s power struggle when she advises him not to enter the dragon’s cave and he, ‘full of fire and greedy hardiment… could not for ought be staide’, as this brings problems upon Redcrosse. It’ll be interesting to see how the presentation of power and powerful characters develops through the poem, as at this moment, there’s a veneer that’s slowly being chipped away.

Not only is The Faerie Queene shaping up to be a fruitful poem to analyse, it’s also very nicely-written, replete with nice touches such as the semantic field of filth around the dragon (‘durtie ground’, ‘ill favored’ children who are ‘a floud of poyson horrible and blacke’, ‘uncouth light’, ‘hideous taile’, ‘cursed head’), or the individually personified varieties of trees (‘the warlike beech’, ‘the fruitfull olive’), or how the writing style switches instantly upon the reveal that Archimago is evil – no longer is ‘rest their feast’; now they are ‘drownd in deadly sleepe’, and it’s a perfect indicator of the impact of this revelation upon the plot. Spenser has a distinct style as well, marked by intertextuality and allusion (‘Faire Venus sonne’, ‘most dreaded impe of highest Jove’, ‘light like Phoebus lampe… doth shine’, the god of sleep Morpheus featuring) and written in phonetic archaisms which help to contribute to the olde-worlde fantasy aspect to this story; I’d imagine this would have been particularly effective at the time of publication; following the Great Vowel Shift and other developments in orthography, surely Spenser’s spellings would have been just ever so slightly outdated, just as ‘Faerie Land’ is just ever so slightly different to ours?

It’s on several university English Lit syllabi (I’m applying this time next month – wish me luck!), but even if it weren’t, I’d happily be gorging myself on the rest of this deliciously multi-layered yet engaging and readable work.

My thoughts on Week 4

The Banquet of Books Reading Challenge has been something of a rollercoaster so far, veering from a cracking Week 2 to a slightly more temperamental third week. Week 4, which took place from August 13th-18th, provided a range of stimulating and engaging texts, to make it easily the best week so far! Read on to find out why...

***THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE TEXTS***

I began the week tucking into an allegorical work (a text which functions on multiple levels by virtue of its literal and subtextual meanings) - I chose Edmund Spenser's famed epic poem The Faerie Queene.  I'll admit that a series of confusing introductory sonnets and epigraphs made me anxious that the poem might be utterly incomprehensible, but in fact, its deliberate orthographical archaisms never preclude its easy readability. Put simply – it’s a cracking read. Not only is The Faerie Queene shaping up to be a fruitful poem to analyse, it’s also very nicely-written, replete with gorgeous touches. Spenser has a distinct style as well, marked by intertextuality and allusion (‘Faire Venus sonne’, ‘most dreaded impe of highest Jove’, ‘light like Phoebus lampe… doth shine’, the god of sleep Morpheus featuring) and written in phonetic archaisms which help to contribute to the olde-worlde fantasy aspect to this story. It’s on several university English Lit syllabi (I’m applying this time next month – wish me luck!), but even if it weren’t, I’d happily be gorging myself on the rest of this deliciously multi-layered yet engaging and readable work. When I was pulling together my thoughts on The Faerie Queene for this post, I realised that I was writing much more analytically than the usual slightly-informal reviews that I do for these roundup posts, so my full 2,000-word analysis/review of what I've read so far of this work is going up as a separate post! It'll be going out next week. Given that much of it was written in the dead of night (I've just finished it now at 4:06am), I'm quite pleased with my efforts, so be sure to give it a read whenever you can!

On Tuesday I was ravenous for some Edwardian fiction, and plumped for G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, which intrigued me in that it’s an ever-so-slightly meta thriller revolving around an anarchic poet who enlists his more law-abiding counterpart into a secret anarchist cult. In the opening to the novel, Chesterton observes a careful structure, introducing his setting, followed by his protagonist, followed by the appearance of the unknown element which disrupts this system – each of these distinct sections is beautifully handled. Possessing dichotomous opinions and exhibiting wildly personalities, Lucian Gregory and Gabriel Syme are united by their outsider status, the latter as a new arrival in Saffron Park and the former as somebody who doesn’t seem to fit with the others. The reader can sense the building tension for the moment when these two forces clash – Chesterton’s description of how ‘an impression grew that [Syme] was less meek than he looked’ is the key that turns in the lock and throws open the door for a confrontation. The two poets’ conflict revolves around the nature and purpose of poetry, allowing for the metaphysical debate which distinguishes this novel from others of its time and genre (though what that genre is isn’t exactly clear at this stage). Certainly, Chesterton gives both arguments time to develop, and treats both sides equally – in the end, anyway, the whole thing dissolves into farce (Syme exclaims ‘let me read a timetable, with tears of pride’), because when all is said and done – as Syme points out – there are better things to do than debate the purpose of poetry.

All literary texts can be considered on different levels – whilst I’ve been trying to highlight and appraise the technical aspects of Chesterton’s craftsmanship, evaluating his use of themes, devices, etc., it bears repeating that a book cannot merely be a thing to study, it has to be a thing to love as well. In terms of sheer enjoy-ability – surely the best indicator of a work’s success – The Man Who Was Thursday ticks the boxes as well. Its opening is a triumph melding uniquely crafted descriptive work with two engaging characters who quickly spring to life on the page – I can’t wait to find out what they get up to. Again, I found when writing a review of The Man Who Was Thursday that it deviated more into analysis than previous reviews; given that it's a rather hefty 1,500-word piece, I'm going to upload my full review/analysis of this book separately, next week.

On Wednesday I searched for some translated Arabic fiction and chanced upon The Green Bird by Emily Nasrallah, published in the short story collection Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women. To be honest, I only decided to read a translated Arabic work because I thought like it sounded like an interesting way of discovering writers I might not otherwise have known about; I wasn't necessarily looking for anything which explicitly celebrated Arabic culture etc., and that's for the best, as Nasrallah's short story focuses itself on producing a heartbreaker of the story, revolving around the narrator's investigations into a man who seems to be constantly 'sitting on the cement block facing my building... immobile, not eating or drinking'; this culminates in the revelation that the man, a refugee fleeing from the violence of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), is awaiting the return of his son in the form of a green bird, drawing on an old folktale of a murdered stepchild who transforms into a green bird after death to torment his murderous stepmother. Immediately, this indicates the key theme of the short story is of guilt and responsibility; despite the fact that his son was unavoidably 'splattered across a wall in a hail of shrapnel and rockets and shells', the father assumes the position of that stepmother, believing himself the guilty party, after having spent a night cradling the child's remains in his arms. The janitor who tells the narrator this story attributes this stance to madness, but nonetheless, the father is 'afraid to close his eyes lest the green bird returns and he does not see it'. To the man, it is his duty to see the green bird, both a symbol of hope and a reminder of the crime of negligence he believes he has committed - a crime which he feels compelled to atone for. The lure of the story also infects the janitor, who too succumbs to feelings of responsibility; like a caged bird, 'the story has been knocking on the walls of his conscience. It pushes him to tell it.' The janitor, however, tells the story coyly and 'waxes philosophical', treating the refugee's tragedy as salacious gossip; his responsibility is not to the refugee, rather to himself - he simply needs to tell the story. The narrator recognises the janitor's selfishness in not intervening, criticising his 'confident, all-knowing smile of a simple man'. Nasrallah spoke about how women became empowered by the Lebanon conflict, and this is true of her narrator, who patronisingly views the janitor as one of '"the simple people... Blessed are their simple, uncomplicated hearts'".

Whilst the narrator is confident in exercising her liberty, interrupting the janitor's ramblings without qualms, she is no better than he is. If there is one lesson to be learned from The Green Bird, it is that we all have a responsibility to others; the narrator views the janitor as a simple man in much the same way that the janitor views the refugee - who is to say that the janitor is not also undergoing similarly hidden anguish? Her (if you'll forgive me) floccinaucinihilipilification of him is far too hasty, her concession that 'the story has conspired against me, and it hooks me, and I cannot free myself' too similar to his handling of the story as an item of gossip, and that is the view Nasrallah espouses. Perhaps the trouble stems from the story taking place in the midst of a conflict described only as 'a nine-year-old story and growing older', which has engendered paranoia to such a degree that 'In Beirut these days no one would ask questions like "Who are you? Where have you come from? Why are you here?" It would be like striking a match to the fuse of a bomb'. That nobody dares ask something as simple as somebody's name intimates that war strips individuals of their right to an identity; they are free to live their life, sitting on the corner of the street, but are expected to be nameless, uncared-for. The janitor regards the refugee with 'an odd mixture of pity and mockery', whilst the narrator '[has] not had the courage to make a move towards him... introduce myself to him... I wouldn't dare', and the consequences are that this refugee will continue to sit on the street corner until he starves to death, dying in delusional hope.

Ultimately, this is a tragic incident of a man who, as the narrator suspects right from the beginning, is 'searching for the unknown, the unattainable'. It is but one example of the sadness that war infects millions of people with, and whilst the narrator's and the janitor's initial reticence to involve themselves in the refugee's history is brought about by the paranoia created by the conflict, Nasrallah also indicts this lack of responsibility, encouraging her postwar audience (the story was published two years after the war ended) to care for others in society. Nasrallah works well within her brief page count, managing to effectively set up a mystery and resolve it whilst packing pathos into the narrative. I'm divided as to whether the author could have spent a few extra pages developing the initial intrigue of the man's situation, as the story seems to be over before it begins, a quick question followed immediately by its answer, but if you're looking for an captivating and deeply emotive short piece, The Green Bird is one that you should seek out.

I chose to read Stephen King's Carrie because I was looking for some horror fiction, but it could equally have been served up under the banner of the 'first published works of famous authors' theme from Week 1. Telling the tale of eponymous telekinetic teenager Carrie White, the novel begins with an example of Carrie exercising her power. Instantly, King creates two separate tones within the book, to great effect: the novel is partly told in the epistolary style, mainly through textbooks and news items (all properly sourced and referenced, to give verisimilitude to this extraordinary tale), which lends the story an almost clinical feel, as if it is an intellectual curiosity to be pored over by academics, something historical and distant. Yet the actual action of the story (in this case describing Carrie's humiliation in the school locker room) is vividly different to this - it's living, colloquial, vivid and tangible, a world where Carrie is not a fascinating subject of academic interest, but 'the White bitch', mocked for being and looking different (given Carrie's later actions, this book almost certainly exhibits the morals of 'don't judge a book by its cover' and 'treat people with kindness'). King packs pathos into this section, describing how Carrie's tormentors' 'laughter, disgusted, contemptuous, horrified, seemed to rise and bloom into something jagged and ugly' and how 'Sue Snell... felt an odd, vexing mixture of hate, revulsion, exasperation, and pity' to vividly build up this oppressive high school environment, and to quickly create the narrative of one lonely girl against a group of bullies who cannot, and don't want to, understand her.

The most effective thing I noticed about this early portion of the book is how King builds tension throughout this shower room scene, adding layer upon layer until 'the critical mass was reached'. Auditory and visual senses, motion, contrast, dialogue, structure and narration are all employed to create this effect, introduced one by one until a shout is 'another senseless sound in the confusion'. Highlights of the writing style here include the mix of the girls' repetitive chant 'PER-iod, per-iod, per-iod!' (which creates a lurching trochaic metre to the whole thing) with the longer paragraphs tracking classmate Sue's thoughts, breaking from the action only for it to resume again, contrasting against Carrie's short, confused dialogue, this long-short paragraph pattern again creating a rhythm. Again comes an effective use of contrast, juxtaposing the other girls' excitable shouts against Carrie standing 'dumbling in the centre of a forming circle' - this constant switching of textures so clearly shows Carrie to be different to the others. It's like they're crowding round to watch a street magician - and when the breaking point comes, King gives the shortest sentence of the whole sequence: 'Fission'.

Likening Carrie's power to an explosion of nuclear energy is entirely apt - if nothing else, the idea of it 'building with all the steadiness of a chain reaction approaching critical mass' corresponds perfectly with the victim vs bully narrative, whilst the concept that 'a 'TK' potential of immense magnitude existed within Carrie White' signals that this power is not in any way artificial; it has come from within Carrie herself, inextricably tied to her nature and released by her circumstances - thus, King is better equipped to present his moral message against bullying than if Carrie was given her powers by some ludicrous alien force, or something more fanciful like that. That Carrie is rooted in real life (an illusion which extends even to its presentation as a case study in a textbook) solidifies its didacticism. And what about Carrie herself? King encourages her classmates' dislike of her by presenting her as more animal than human, by virtue of a series of zoomorphic similes (she is 'a frog among swans' and 'looked the part of the sacrificial goat'). Most striking is the description given when Carrie finally succumbs to her tormentors: 'she slowly collapsed into a sitting position. Slow, helpless groans jerked out of her. Her eyes rolled with wet whiteness, like the eyes of a hog in the slaughtering pen'. This zoomorphism allows the reader to better understand why the other girls mock Carrie, but also exposes the futility of this bullying, because the girls might be the most inherently animal people of all. They travel in packs, all behave as one, operate at 'the subconscious level where savage things grow', and there's something primeval about the way they attack Carrie by hurling things at her.

The book doesn't just offer food for thought - and whilst we're on the subject, surely it's significant that Carrie unlocks her powers as soon as she has her first period? King's writing style is confident throughout, full of latent potential, inviting us into this intriguing premise. True, he has a slightly clichéd tendency to end sections with a shock reveal ('What none of them knew was that Carrie White was telekinetic', etc.), but this is more than made up for by the chilling nonchalance with which the character of Ruth mentioned, purportedly in a textbook on the incident, as 'one of [Carrie's] surviving classmates'. In just its opening sequence, Carrie draws together different styles in an effective way, ruminates on issues of bullying, loneliness and feminity, and delivers a thumping good story packed with intrigue to boot.


Pat Barker's Union Street tells the stories of the impoverished women of the titular street, beginning with eleven-year-old Kelly. As it's an ensemble piece, it's crucial that Barker presents the reader with stunningly-crafted characters, as they truly drive the story - Kelly is one of these characters. Even better, there's very little about her that we learn for the character's sake; rather, Kelly's characterisation consistently contributes to the novel's themes of family, womanhood and relative poverty. For example, we learn that she's cheeky when she persuades her mum's new boyfriend Arthur to give her money for the cinema - even though Arthur is sure 'it was kids half price', Kelly wheedles a full 50p out of him - 'not on Mondays', she replies. This isn't merely revealing Kelly to be cheeky for the sake of having a cheeky character; instead, it feeds into the portrayal of working-class family, so fearful of bankruptcy that even the child knows how to get a freebie, can assess whether a fairground ride is 'worth ten p', and 'when the last chip was gone... [lick] the paper, relishing the grittiness of salt on her tongue, worrying at the corners of the bag to get out the last crumb of burnt and crispy batter'. Equally, when Kelly 'looked at the hair in [her sister Linda's] armpits, at the breasts that shook and wobbled when she ran, and no, she didn't want to get like that. and she certainly didn't want to drip foul-smelling, brown blood out of her fanny', it isn't an indicator of her squeamishness, but metaphorically a signal that she is afraid of growing up (by the bye, 'fanny' fits into the pattern of colloquialisms which colour the novel, extending to the phonetically transcribed pronoun 'me' for 'my', and the particularly noteworthy exclamation '"It won't need anybugger else"'). Try as Kelly might, though, she is growing up - take, for example, the instance where her mum expects her not to understand the 'secret, grown-up joke' she makes to Arthur in her presence - but 'Kelly heard it, and bristled'. Everything we learn about Kelly exemplifies the themes of Union Street.

Another of the novel's early triumphs is a particularly well-realised portrayal of a working-class household in a poor area, extending to nice touches such as descriptions of how Kelly 'ran all the way downstairs, remembering... to jump over the hole in the passage where the floorboards had given way' and of how 'the lights of the Assembly Hall shone dimly' - unable to afford solutions, this is a town whose people struggle on with broken floors and inefficient light bulbs. Barker vivifies this impoverished backdrop by presenting the family's attitude to possessions, revealing that everything is precious when the mother rants '"I see you've nicked another of me sweaters. Beats me why you can't wear your own. You'd think you had nowt to put on'" and irreplaceable when Barker describes how her 'old working jumper had gone white under the armpits from deodorants and sweat'". As a consequence of this lack of material wealth, the real thing of value in these people's lives is each other: Union Street itself is teeming with life, from Doris the gossip, 'hoping for somebody to share the outrage with', to Kelly's household, where she is '"our Kell"' and sniffs 'hungrily at the sweater she was wearing, which held all the mingled smells of her mother's body'. Amongst many other things, this is a book about community, and how it holds together these women whose lives would otherwise be unfulfilling.

The author leads us to believe that the agent of conflict in this story will be Arthur, Kelly's mum's new boyfriend, who seems to threaten the harmonious matriarchy. Barker describes how 'he came in smiling nervously, anxious to appear at ease', yet Kelly is 'guarding herself from the temptation of liking him'. There are several ways to interpret this reaction; it is tempting to assume that she is resistant to the arrival of a new father figure because she holds out hope for the return of her real father, who she thinks about 'always when she [is] most unhappy' and doubts, 'in moments of panic and despair... if she would recognise him if she [met him]'. Alternatively, perhaps Kelly fears the outsider coming into this tight-knit matriarchal family, where Kelly and her sister share a room despite both being in double figures - who is he to already assume the moniker of 'uncle Arthur', when he clearly hasn't shared in experiences like the ones they have? Most likely, Kelly doesn't want to succumb to the 'temptation of liking him' because she knows he won't be around much longer to indulge that temptation - we learn from one of the town gossips that Kelly's mum flits from man to man, week to week, almost like she's constantly searching for someone to belong to. True, Arthur does represent a challenge to the normal order in Kelly's house, forcing an unusual 'refined voice' out of Kelly's mum, obliging her to invent a deceitful, self-aggrandising reality for herself, one where she is much richer and '"can't think how we've ever got so short [of food for breakfast]"'. Note how, when Kelly mentally accuses her mother of 'sucking up again, pretending to be what she wasn't' and opines (perceptively) that 'all this was Arthur's fault', it is the only hint of malice we ever infer from the character.

However, Barker introduces another thread of the story which more clearly represents the beginning of the piece's rising action: a 'menacingly elegant' man, 'thin and dark as an exclamation mark' who meets the truant Kelly in a park and instantly sets off all the alarms for the reader, by virtue of Barker's innovative employment of visual and auditory cues, describing how 'his voice shook with excitement', 'he had accepted [Kelly's] lie [about why she is off school] without believing it' and how he offered '"You could come with me, if you liked," he said. And stood breathing'. So evident is it to the reader that this unnamed man is up to no good, that we are doubly surprised when Kelly goes with him - again, the beauty of the writing of Union Street is that everything feeds into the themes of the story, and that includes Kelly's reasoning: 'this man stared at her as if every pore in her skin mattered. His eyes created her'. Pat Barker's tale is about many things, such as womanhood and class, but the main focus is belonging - belonging to a community, to a family, to a person - as this exquisitely-crafted introduction exemplifies.

Margaret Atwood is best known for The Handmaid's Tale these days, but on Saturday I turned to her poetry, A Sad Child in particular - because I was looking for particularly emotive poetry, and what's more sorrowful than a crying child? The poem's narrator aims to explain to a child why they're sad, using the apathetic realism with which you'd address an adult; Atwood packs the text with imperatives - 'go see a shrink or take a pill' - and a tricolon of simple sentences creates an abrupt feel when the narrator reasons, of the sadness, 'It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical'. The poem strikes the reader with its unapologetic, analytical approach to sorrow - it's as if the narrator is fed up of comforting people who are sad, instead merely suggesting 'all children are sad/but some get over it', the pragmatic implication being that the child, too, should 'get over it', which, in itself, treats sadness in a trivial way that denies the true power and effect of traumatic events on children. The (adult) narrator's advice to 'buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.' contributes to this perception of them as a flawed parent who cannot properly console their child, suggesting what they would do, instead of what the child could do.

The cause of this sadness? Even the parent can't pin that down properly, calling it 'whatever it was that was done to you/the day of the lawn party/when you came inside.../and said to yourself in the bathroom,/I am not the favourite child'. Atwood chooses one of the most universal causes of sadness - feeling as though you are unloved - and presents it from dual viewpoints: first, there is the child, for whom this revelation is 'shadow' that deeply affects their happiness, and second, there is the adult, who no doubt has experienced, and continues to experience, at times, this feeling, but understands that sadness has to be overcome. In this way, the poet depicts an eternal battle against sadness, in which the parent buys their child a 'new dress with the ribbon' and fills them up with 'ice-cream' in an effort to keep them afloat, but this is the first time when the child has experienced this new emotion, and now she is 'sulky with sugar', and the world doesn't taste so sweet any more. To this end, the recount of the moment when the daughter realised 'I am not the favourite child' is presented as a full stanza, replete with enjambment, ending in the first full stop of the stanza, almost marking how the child probably feels like their world is ending. But as the parent brings things back to their worldly perspective, the enjambment continues, and the full stops are gone, representing how we all have to keep going, despite our sadness. The final imagery Atwood offers is of how 'you're trapped in your overturned body under a blanket or burning car, and the red flame is seeping out of you and igniting the tarmac beside your head', invoking the idea of death to brutally remind their child of mortality: we all only have the one life, and sadness should not be a barrier to our living that life. Yet, she urges, we should take comfort in the fact that everyone feels sad - 'none of us is; or else we all are'. It is the emotion that links us all, and the 'shadow' that we all have to break free of.

Notable for its uniquely blunt perspective on the most universal of all emotions, Atwood's poem tackles a sensitive subject in an insensitive way, to convey an important moral. Excellent stuff with which to end the week.

Wow. This week's texts have surprised and delighted me, and there hasn't been a dud among them. Once again, a Medieval text (well, Medieval or thereabouts) has astounded me with its intricacy and enjoyability; a debut author has thrilled me with his impressive technical feats; a short story which (to be perfectly honest) was selected as a backup choice when my original pick wasn't available to sample for free has broken my heart whilst commenting on war and responsibility; and other texts have ticked all the right boxes, in terms of creative writing style, fun characters and intriguing plot. I'd finish reading all of this week's texts, without a doubt. Well done Week 4.

I've got a lot of books that have recently come in for my own personal reading, independent of what I'm reading for The Blog, plus I have universities to apply to in the next month or so, so I'm going to be taking a break for a week or two, just to recharge the batteries. Don't think I'll be skimping on the posts, though! Whilst I'm taking a very brief hiatus from the reading challenge, I'll be uploading my full reviews of The Faerie Queene and The Man Who Was Thursday, as well as penning a 'The Story So Far' post reflecting on the journey up until now. At some point, I'll review Captain Corelli's Mandolin, as I've promised in the past, but I'm busy for a little while now. To keep yourself busy in the interim, you could always look over some of the old menus (there's a sidebar on the main page of the blog with links to previous menus) and pick one of the backup texts to read.

As ever, you can follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks to discover what I'm up to - that's where I'll announce when we're starting the next week of the challenge, as well - and I'll see you here next week with some tasty reviews of 16th-century fantasy poetry and 20th-century thriller!

This week's menu: August 13th-18th

 
An allegory is a story which works on two levels: it has its literal meaning, as given in the text, but also conceals another, hidden, interpretation, often along moral, spiritual or political grounds. To investigate this genre, I'm going to start Week 4's literary banquet with The Faerie Queene, one of the longest poems in the English language, written by Elizabeth I-sponsored Edmund Spenser over a period of six years; thanks to the Queen's patronage, this epic became the poet's most famous work. Literally, it's about some knights and their examination of virtues, but allegorically, it seems to be about, well, just about everything! Mostly, I hear that it critiques the Tudor dynasty, whilst finding the time to criticise the Scottish royal family, leading to its ban in Scotland! If you've already read it, feel free to try Golding's terrifying Lord of the Flies or Orwell's superb out-and-out allegory Animal Farm.

The Edwardian era only lasted for nine years, but spawned its own unique artistic identity, influenced by the fashions of continental Europe; in particular, human rights and technology were beginning to become influential themes of literature, and a distinction was forming between 'highbrow' and 'popular' fiction. To sample the best of the Edwardian era, I'll be tucking into G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Intriguingly subtitled 'A Nightmare', this is a thriller centring around secret policeman Gabriel Syme and his involvement with the anarchist poet Lucian Gregory, incorporating metaphysical discussion about the meaning of poetry - I can't wait to see what Chesterton has to offer! Alternatively, you could read Reginald, a collection of the witty Saki's short stories which satirise the society around him, or Canadian author L. M. Montgomery's children's story Anne of Green Gables.

So far on this reading challenge, I've sampled the works of Irish and Russian writers, and now I'm turning to writers whose works were originally published in Arabic, and then translated into English. My top pick today is the short story The Green Bird (it can be found here) by Lebanese writer Emily Nasrallah, who died earlier this year. Her short stories and novels won her numerous Arabic literary prizes, and touch on a multitude of themes ranging from family life to feminism. Other books you could read on a similar theme include Layla Baalbaki's controversial feminist classic Ana Ahya and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's political thriller In Search of Walid Masoud.

For the fourth course of the banquet, I wanted to savour some delicious horror fiction, and who else could I turn to but the master himself, Stephen King? His first novel Carrie was published in 1974 and quickly became a classic of the genre, so it's what I'll be reading on Thursday. Revolving around a schoolgirl's powers of telekinesis, and told partially in an epistolary style, the book is one of the most frequently banned in America! My alternative picks for today, since I'm sure many of you will already have read Stephen King, span a period of a hundred years, into which Carrie is neatly tucked; first, I offer you E Nesbit's Grim Tales, a short story collection published in the early 20th century, and second, I invite you to read Paul Cornell's Chalk, published last year, which melds folklore and fantasy with horror. I hope you enjoy the thrill of reading some horror!

The idea of a struggling protagonist is common, in particular, to proletarian literature - consider, for example, the 'rags to riches' fiction in which a down-on-their-luck lead gains notoriety, wealth, whatever it is that they were missing at the start of the book. Wanting to read something along these lines, with protagonists in poverty, I'm turning to the bleak Union Street, written by Pat Barker in the early 1980s - it focuses on seven working-class women's lives over the same period of a few months in the 1970s. If you've already read this book, I offer up two more books with protagonists in poverty: Love on the Dole was written by Walter Greenwood half a century before Barker's book was published, but depicts similar themes of poverty in Northern England, and for an international twist, you could read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, focusing on a farmer family during the Great Depression in America.

I've never been the greatest lover of poetry, but I find that I'm slowly coming round to it, and realising that far from being all about daffodils in the springtime, it can be something laugh-out-loud hilarious, witty, powerful, thought-provoking, challenging, brave, moving. So the dessert at this week's banquet is going to, hopefully, let us all have a good old cry. I'm going to be reading Margaret Atwood's A Sad Child, because what's sadder than a sad child? The poem tries to explain the concept of sorrow to an infant, presenting it as something which must be overcome. And there's a bumper crop of alternative picks today, to encourage you to read a few more poems beyond just the Atwood poem: I encourage you to finish the week with Suicide in the Trenches (Sassoon), Bereavement (Bysshe Shelley), Annabel Lee (Poe) and I Measure Every Grief I Meet (Dickinson). Happy crying!

As is customary, you can spend Sunday in any way you like; perhaps you could try some of the back-up options from each day, read into the context of a book you enjoyed this week, sample some of the authors' other works, or terrify yourselves by watching the film version of Carrie with all the lights off. It's all up to you.

I'll be back the week after next to tell you all about how I got on with this lot of reads - until then, you can keep up to date on Twitter (@Banquetofbooks), and I'll see you soon!

My thoughts on Week 3

Week 3 of the Banquet of Books Reading Challenge has been a bit of a rocky one, to be honest - keep reading to find out my thoughts on this week's six reads!

We began the week with a bildungsroman, and I selected Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Initially a little confusing, Sterne (writing as Shandy) quickly establishes the setting and characters - Shandy and his uncle - and is then able to inject humour into the narrative. Presented as an autobiography written by an author who can't stop linguistically fidgeting, parts of Sterne's novel (which, by the bye, is a mammoth nine-volume effort) are highly amusing, for example when Shandy's lengthy two-page discussion about hobby-horses is completed by the signature 'My Lord, Your Lordship's most obedient, and most devoted, and most humble servant, Tristram Shandy' before the next chapter immediately resumes this overlong digression ('I solemnly declare to all mankind, that the above dedication was made for no one Prince, Prelate, Pope or Potentate'). It is perhaps difficult to judge such a monumental work on its first handful of chapters alone, but so far Sterne has done a decent job of establishing Shandy's character as somebody pretentious and petulant, bemoaning the fact that 'I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune' and that he lives on 'one of the vilest worlds that ever was made'; the character is also presented as childishly naive at times (he opines that 'my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world' and wishes that he 'had been born in the Moon'), yet can also be honest about himself, sometimes in contradictory ways, such as when he confesses 'I am not a wise man;— and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in the world, it is not much matter what I do'.

Happily, the contradictions in Shandy's character can be explained by the fact that he's a subjective autobiographer who doesn't really know who he is. Despite Sterne presenting Shandy as somebody who 'neither [thinks] nor [acts] like any other man's child', the character is suitably real to sustain the novel so far, and I can imagine readers enjoying spending the course of the book in his garrulous company. However, my main issue with Sterne's work is that it's not aged well for a modern audience. Simply put, it's too wordy and too digressive. I'm aware that the constant digressions and overlong phrasing of simple things are key motifs within the novel, and is explained away as part of Shandy's desire not 'to disappoint any one soul living' - including those 'who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last', but as a modern reader, I'm just not sure I could put up with it for a whole book. For that reason, I won't be continuing with this book, although I can acknowledge how it contains all the hallmarks of a bildungsroman, but with an added comedic touch which distinguishes it from other works such as Jane Eyre.

On Tuesday, I tucked into the Poems and Fancies of the aristocrat Lady Margaret Cavendish. In the introduction to this book during the last week's menu, I noted that Cavendish intriguingly managed to be both a poet and a scientist, and the poems I read combine the two in a really unique way; it's definitely something that I haven't read before. Varying wildly in length from about 10 lines to about 140, the poems I read expound Cavendish's ideas about atoms - but first, the introduction explains how 'When Nature first the world's foundation laid,/She called a counsel how it might be made', this council being composed of Motion, Life, Form and Matter. A complication arises with the issue of 'Death, my great enemy', and Cavendish effectively conveys the 'strong mighty power' of this foe by her use of structure - having established the omnipotence of the concepts of Motion, Life, Form and Matter, she then juxtaposes this with their fear of Death, which Matter thinks ‘corrupts, and makes me stink’. The celestial council’s great triumphant act is to make the mind of man eternal, and Cavendish then gives Death’s futile reaction, all carried by the fairytale quality of the lilting ABAB rhyme scheme. It’s a beautiful poem, full of innovative phrasing and ideas – for example, ‘Sloth and Sleep’ are Death’s servants, employed ‘to get half of the time before they die’.

That Cavendish’s poetry binds together a traditional ABAB rhyme scheme and distinctive, innovative subject matter is exemplified by the succeeding run of rhymes, which revolve around Cavendish’s unconventional (to modern minds, at least) beliefs about atoms – they are square, round, long and sharp, and correspond to the atoms of earth, water, fire and air respectively. Cavendish gives her reasoning for all of this, before explaining which atoms make fire, what happens when atoms join, and a whole miscellany of other atomic facts. My issue with these poems, compared to the whimsical allegory of the opening diptych, is that they lack true interest – notice how I haven’t found anything distinctive to quote. Yes, Cavendish’s decision to base her poetry on her scientific beliefs is a brave and individual move, but by simply explaining these beliefs in a poetic structure, she risks losing the interest of readers who’d prefer to read something a bit more substantial than a lyrical textbook.

On Wednesday, I was reading a work of fiction whose characters exhibit some of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Sinclair family, protagonists of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars, aren’t even aware of their greed, their privilege and excessive wealth, and that’s my first problem. This is a family who spend summers on their private island and ‘got rid of the couch and armchairs my parents had bought together’ when the parents split up. The daughter refers to her mother as ‘Mummy’, bemoans how ‘Red Gate is a much smaller house than Clairmont [both are houses on the island], but it still has four bedrooms up top’ and notes that ‘Ed followed Johnny, having stopped to help the staff unload the luggage’ – this is the only time ‘the staff’ are mentioned! I know that Lockhart probably wants me to hate these people from the off, but first, that isn’t the most failsafe way to construct a story, and secondly, I cannot comprehend how they can be this blind to their own wealth – surely when the narrator Cady introduces her family (as ‘athletic, tall and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive’. Incidentally, nobody talks like this! Only in lousily-written film scripts) she would mention how privileged she feels to have such an easy life.

The above description that Cady gives of her family highlights one of my issues with Lockhart’s writing style; the author packs paragraphs with tricolons and little tripartite ideas, all lined up in incessant rows. When Cady describes her family (quoted above) she uses three tricolons in a single page (the first comes immediately before the above quote, Cady declaring ‘No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure’), and this continues throughout Cady’s opening chapter. I was initially prepared to tolerate it because I thought it was significant to the plot (similar to how Christopher in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time uses repetitive structures to reflect his need for routine), and whilst I concede that it could be the kind of repetitive device used by a teenage girl writing down her life story, it reads very unprofessionally and puts me off this book from the start. Elsewhere, purple prose characterises the text, with certain sections lurching unannounced into dizzying and incomprehensible patterns of enjambment – and I simply have to highlight the ridiculous scene where Cady’s father abandons her, and all hell breaks loose in the chimps-writing-Shakespeare typewriter factory which vomited out this story: ‘He started the engine. Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest… my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound.’ And then, and then, here comes the killer line, the one the chimps earned an extra banana for – speaking about the blood… ‘it tasted like salt and failure’. BLEEEEUUURGH. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

It’s unfair to judge such a (clearly slow-burning) book on its first few chapters, but it’s difficult to say where the merit lies in it. I’m sure that Lockhart’s text does have its beautiful moments, with nice touches such as Cady relating how ‘divorce shreds the muscles of our hearts’ and how she is ‘nearly eighteen’ paling in contrast to a glorious description of love a few chapters in. So far, there has been no retribution for our sinful (in the Seven Deadly sense) characters, but their greed and materialism has been well-established. I’m tempted to say that I’ll give this book another go – its clumsy YA-pandering prose conceals moments of undoubtable beauty – but realistically, in a world where, sadly, reading time is limited, this one just doesn’t have enough to bring me back. 

Full confession: I didn’t understand Loba. There’s very little I can say about this epic poem, in which Beat Generation writer and activist Diane di Prima identifies herself with the she-wolf, because I found it so taxing that it was difficult to derive much meaning from it. Echoing her contemporary Ginsberg’s Howl in her melding of different imagery and structures, di Prima writes mainly about femininity, but by god does she do it confusingly. The she-wolf is introduced as ‘the wind you never leave behind, black cat you killed in empty lot… she is harpy on your fire-escape, marble figurine carved in the mantelpiece… cornucopia that wails in the night, deathgrip you cannot cut away’ – the best I can make of this is that di Prima is emphasising the she-wolf’s permanence (or is it simply its multifariousness – how does a description of the she-wolf as ‘the fiery cloak of feathers carries you off hills when you run flaming down to the black sea’ link to permanence? It speaks more of the idea of the loba as a friend or an aid), but just as E Lockhart heaps on the tricolons, so does di Prima with the metaphors, to similar incomprehensible effect.

In the poems that I read, di Prima introduces the concept of the loba, clears up ‘Some Lies About The Loba’ (a poem which, brilliantly, ends by declaring the lie ‘that there is anything to say of her which is not truth’) and proceeds to introduce the ‘Lilith Of The Stars’. In this poem, the eponymous mystical protagonist is established in a concise and accessible way, relying on imagery that is not too disparate to confuse the reader, and is sufficiently evocative to intrigue them. Lilith appears to men ‘as vapour, a plague, a cacophony of unique bells, straining and stranger’ – instantly, and effortlessly, di Prima recruits multiple senses to convey her character. Ultimately, Loba is a mixed bag, confusingly written in places but brimming with wonderful, lyrical delights – lines that sing, such as di Prima’s dirty, tobacco-scented description of how ‘the streets were littered w/ half-eaten food’ and her question ‘Shall we remember the half-mad whores who walked on them?... Who will remember the bleakness of this time? Who will recall it, later?’ Diane di Prima says that Loba, an ongoing poem, is written when inspiration calls; it is “a series of poems that burst out of me”, and that could explain its unfiltered, unregulated nature, but the bitty style of Loba isn’t one that appeals to me, and whilst I accept that reading the full thing would give me a much clearer picture of di Prima’s artistic aims, as with E Lockhart’s work, it’s not something that I realistically have the time to explore further.

Being a musician as well as an avid reader, I decided that the fifth course of this week’s banquet would be a music-themed book. So far, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is only loosely themed around music (its characters all are connected to a record label tycoon), but I’ll let that slide because Egan’s introductory chapter, detailing the misadventures of pathological kleptomaniac Sasha, is beautifully done.

We are introduced to a character whose entire life is defined by her kleptomania. The things she steals are ‘embarrassments and close shaves and little triumphs and moments of pure exhilaration… years of her life compressed’. She lives experiencing emotions through her acts of theft. She knows she has ‘twenty eight-bars of soap, and eighty-five pens’ in her apartment, for example; it’s like she spends her days counting her prizes. Egan’s beautiful use of language allows the reader to construct an impression of Sasha in just a single chapter, without the need for much exposition – for example, Sasha lives a life where her ‘apartment had ended up solidifying around [her], gathering mass and weight, until she felt… mired in it’, a static and unfulfilled life, but stealing makes it all worthwhile. The act is presented in terms of childlike wonder – the handle of a screwdriver gleams ‘like a lollipop’ before it works its way into Sasha’s hands. To take a wallet is to ‘seize the moment, accept the challenge, take the leap, fly the coop, throw caution to the wind, live dangerously’; instantly, so many facets of Sasha’s character are unlocked – she is an opportunist, determined, brave, independent, intrepid. Something I hadn’t even thought about, which the novel made me aware of, was the idea that kleptomaniacs do not always want to steal. In the case of Sasha, Egan emphatically presents it as more of a need, motivated not by spite or pettiness, but because it provides security, and happiness, and it just livens up her life. On the night of stealing a wallet, Sasha divides her recollections into ‘Prewallet’ and ‘Postwallet’. Postwallet, ‘the scene tingled with mirthful possibility’ – Egan vividly conveys the sense of the night coming alive, as Sasha realises that ‘“I’m always happy… sometimes I just forget.”’ Stealing a screwdriver is like medicine to Sasha; it allows her to feel ‘instant relief from the pain of having [an old plumber] snuffling under the tub.

One of Egan’s innovations is to format the story in the third-person past, yet a few pages in, to make the reader aware that what they have just read fits within the framing device of Sasha’s conversations with a therapist, Coz, whose speech interrupts the narrative and reveals that Sasha is describing all her problems to him, and we as the readers are just reading it. This device intimates a close connection between Sasha and the audience, as if we are her therapist as well, privy to all of her thoughts, and this induces us to try to help her, to diagnose her. It’s a fascinating technique to engage the reader in what is already a very enticing tale.

So, the diagnosis: Sasha is portrayed as too resistant to outsiders, the unfamiliar. She ‘recoiled’ at the ‘frank need’ of a woman whom she had just robbed, since this quality is something ‘New Yorkers quickly learn how to hide’. Her date Alex’s ‘anger made him recognisable in a way that an hour of aimless chatter had not: he was new to New York’. Perhaps the reason she puts up with Coz is that he is ‘old school inscrutable’, a blank canvas onto whom she can splatter the paint of her experiences. Again, Egan tells, rather than shows, and as such the prose flows beautifully, rising up out of the ink and dancing on the page. Throughout, Egan subtly hints that Sasha isn’t ready to overcome her problem just yet, because she doesn’t understand it. Whilst Sasha has the fanciful idea that she is ‘writing a story whose end had already been determined: she would get well’, her clear commitment to change isn’t met by action, because her main problem with this lifestyle is that ‘“I’m bankrupting myself to pay for you”’ – again, Sasha lives based on her personal philosophies about value, rather than living a life based on morality. Whilst her desire to shirk ‘the burden of eye contact’ between therapist Coz and her hints that she feels ashamed of her actions, she asks Coz at the end of the chapter, ‘“Don’t ask me how I feel”’, and as the reader, we get the hint that this woman is a long way off the redemption she craves.

As I mentioned at the start of the review, A Visit from the Goon Squad is an ensemble piece, and if the other protagonists’ tales continue to the superb character work Egan does in Sasha’s introduction, then I’m sure this book will delight me ‘til the end.

If you’d have told me a month ago that Shakespeare would have come to the rescue and drastically improved my memories of this week’s reading challenge, I’d have been astounded. But The Comedy of Errors was a wonderful play to sample on Saturday, and ended the week on a high. The theme of the sixth course of the literary banquet was a text which obeys the Classical Unity of Time – that is, all of its action takes place on the same day. In its short opening act, Shakespeare’s early comedy both introduces this key conceit (by having Duke Solinus of Ephesus tasking the criminal Egeon to collect the sum of one thousand marks within the day) and finds a way around its limitations (Egeon provides a lot of expository backstory). Themed around two sets of identical twin brothers (kind of like Twelfth Night on acid), The Comedy of Errors is like a delicious mixing bowl filled with tasty Shakespearean ingredients – although it’s categorised as a comedy, any Shakespeare fan knows that the pioneer of the tragi-comedy genre never made things as simple as they seem on the surface, and so the play is brimming with coruscating turns of phrase, beautiful speeches, tense melodrama and genuine threat.

The premise is introduced in the opening scene, which depicts the merchant Egeon explaining to Duke Solinus of Ephesus why he, against Ephesian laws, has landed on the island. From the off, Solinus and Egeon are vividly-realised characters – Solinus in particular, far from being a simple stereotype embodying only one set of characteristics, switches from initial harshness (‘The enmity and discord which of late/Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke/…excludes all pity from our threatening looks’) to keen interest in Egeon’s story (‘Do me the favour to dilate at full/What hath befall’n’), which allows him to completely change his stance (he confesses ‘we may pity, though not pardon thee’). The brutal Ephesian justice, which decrees that Egeon will be put to death if he cannot accumulate a thousand mark fine, lends suspense to the opening scene, as the audience sympathises with the benevolent Egeon. Shakespeare seems to disparage this Draconian system; by presenting us with the pathos of Egeon’s story (he describes how ‘a heavier task could not have been imposed/Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable’, these ‘griefs’ recounting the story of how he became separated from his wife and one of his children when his ‘sinking-ripe’ ship struck a rock in a storm), and then juxtaposing it against Solinus’s mere dispassionate concession that he will ‘limit thee this day/To seek thy life by beneficial help’, since what Egeon has done by coming to Ephesus is ‘againt our laws,/Against my crown, my oath, my dignity’, the playwright criticises those in power for prizing their own reputation over their compassion. Egeon has been ‘sever’d from my bliss’, and the outlook is noticeably bleak for a purported comedy.

At this early stage (the play has five acts in all), comedy is just one component in a multifaceted play – and to think that this is regarded as one of Shakespeare’s more frivolous and lightweight works! The comedy really begins in the second scene, which introduces the comic tropes of mistaken identity and disorder which abound in other works such as Twelfth Night. In this scene, Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio arrive on Ephesus, where the former entrusts some money to the latter. Dromio leaves to store this money away, but in the interim arrives the identical Dromio of Ephesus, who, of course, has no idea about this money when quizzed by the increasingly grumpy Antipholus. The escalation of Antipholus’s confusion and anger is a comic masterclass which establishes the impatient and assertive facets of his character (he declares he is ‘not in a sportive humour now:/Tell me, and dally not, where is the money?’) and allows Shakespeare to run the whole gamut of comedic devices, as Antipholus hurls invectives at the ‘knave’ Dromio of Ephesus, despite the latter’s complete and utter bewilderment, and worries about the ‘liberties of sin’ that may be found in this town.

There are moments of real linguistic beauty nestled within the superficially comedic frame of The Comedy of Errors; for example, Egeon sombrely recounts that ‘in this unjust divorce of [his wife and him],/ Fortune had left to both of us alike/What to delight in, what to sorrow for’, where the anaphora of ‘what to’ allows Shakespeare to encapsulate the complexity of Egeon’s emotions after losing one of his children but retaining the other. This complex weaving of elements of pathos and drama around a comedic framework is testament to Shakespeare’s enduring success as a playwright, and I’ll definitely try to find a spare afternoon to devour the rest of this deeply impressive little firecracker of a play.

In conclusion, whilst Week 2 had impressed me with at least three books that I’d happily read to the end (you can find that post here), this week has been a much more difficult ride. All of its texts have had moments of blossoming wonder that I can appreciate as artful examples of good writing, but on the whole, the week’s reads haven’t surprised or delighted me in the same ways that I’ve experienced in the past. We’ll have to see if Week 4 picks up the pace again – I’ll be posting its menu over the next few days, and the week’s banquet will begin on Monday 13 August. Until then, you can keep up to date with all of my literary comings and goings by following me on Twitter (@Banquetofbooks), and I’ll see you back here over the weekend!