Recent reads: Animal Farm - George Orwell, A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr, Through England on a Side-Saddle - Celia Fiennes

Animal Farm - George Orwell

I've always admired Orwell but perhaps felt I was too old for this, it being one of a great number of books almost everyone read when they were 12 and I didn't. (See also Catch 22, Brave New World and, erm... Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas?)

Something had always put me off it: the concept seemed irritating and rather obvious. I couldn't imagine how any writer, let alone Orwell, who I've always thought of as a good fiction writer, but not a great one, could stretch the point to over 100 pages.

I was so wrong. This is by far my favourite Orwell book now, leapfrogging 'Homage...', '1984' and 'Road to Wigan Pier', not to mention the many others I haven't bothered reading. This is a fantastic story told with expert control and pacing; what's more, it's tremendously sad.

Some of the characters - e.g. Boxer, the dutiful work-horse, Napoleon, the duplicitous despot and the cynical donkey, whatever he's called - are absolutely fantastic. When we see Boxer's inevitable demise approaching, it's even sadder than when Snowball was stabbed in the back; the level of treachery between these 'comrades' clearly knows no bounds.

The Manor farm beasts remind one surprisingly well of how much (or how little) one remembers of A-Level history, and the specific events, anecdotally allegorised are a thrill to spot, but that aside, as a straight story with or without the cold, metallic bones of satire that house its sinewy flesh, this novel is a quite horrible beast and a more accurate reflection of the inherent unfairness of systems of government, labour and law I have never come across. It's really very moving.

A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr

A short but incredibly-detailed story of a war-damaged London-born loner restoring a painting in a church "up north", this novel is at once very unusual in its simplicity and stark portrayal of a snapshot in history, and truly "classic" (just like it informs me on the cover - thanks Penguin).

The characters - not least our subtly-humorous, embarrassed and somewhat damaged narrator - are almost impossibly-well realised for what little space they have to flourish, and the relationships between them all are unique and special, painting pictures in myriad styles running the gamut of human emotions.

The uncertainty of the 70something-year-old "I"'s relationship to this embryonic self is galvanised by the humdrum nature of the recollection juxtaposed with the obviously huge emotional significance of this brief period in his post-war youth.

Technically, I suppose, it's little more than a very uneventful love story, but it's an eminently-fine novel and truly deserving of its reputation as "unique" in the English language.


Through England on a Side-Saddle - Celia Fiennes

I actually read this ages ago but forgot to add it to my blog-based reading record so here it is; a diary or travel writing compendium penned by a well-to-do female in the seventeenth century, this is entirely unlike anything I've read before and undoubtedly a rare enough record from such far-flung times.

Ms. Fiennes is "a remarkable woman" by all accounts, and certainly comes across as brave and industrious and utterly fascinated by the world around her. (She rode side-saddle through every county in England, accompanied only by two servants.)

Her observations on the changing landscape of the nation are the biggest surprise here. One is taught to imagine the UK as a pretty stagnant place between the dark ages and the Industrial Revolution, but the massive developments that she sees by way of trade in dyes, tin, foodstuffs &c. tell a very different story.

Her knee-jerk likes and dislikes of whole cityfuls of folk make for very amusing reading also, and show a very human face behind the detached and considered observations of an expert. Her good opinion once lost, one presumes, is never got again, and one suspects she kept - some place apart from the main body of the diary - a league table of types of bread she bought and ate around the land, basing her opinion on the character of the bakers closely on the quality of said staple baked goods.

She also has a tendency to regularly refute the claims of road signs and insist (on at least five occasions, I'm sure) that a 6 mile road is, in fact, more like a 7 or an 8 mile road.

We've all been there!