Fresh Words Daily

One of the good things about a wet summer holiday is that you can lounge about and read.  I have had a range of books given me over the Christmas period ranging from Judi Dench’s autobiography to a book about a man who read the Oxford English Dictionary.  Certainly a breadth there.  But the book I have been caught up with is Peter Godwin’s memoir about Africa in particular Zimbabwe.  The book begins in 1996 when on an assignment for the National Geographic Peter gets the news of his father’s illness.  He is gravely ill and not expected to live.  The news is given him when he is sitting with Prince Galenja Biyela a Zulu prince who is recounting the story of when twenty-five thousand zulu warriors took on the British regiments.  We are cast immediately into the depths of Africa and when there is ‘the screaming in the pocket’ which  translated from zulu and means the cell phone  is ringing and we are given a reprieve and taken on the path to Zimbabwe to his father’s sickbed.  The story then centres around life in Zimbabwe and how this beautiful country which was once wealthy and well stocked with food and produce has become filthy, war-ridden, and poverty stricken.  All because of one man the dictator Mugabe.  This is such a well told story not just about the country but also about a family who finds their true ancestry.  Peter Godwin writes so well – and so he should he has been a journalist for many years – but being a good journalist doesn’t always translate into writing a good well crafted book..  What has come out of this book for me a thirst to know more about Zimbabwe – hard to find as writers are not welcome in Zimbabwe and could end in prison if they do not declare their occupation.  And could still end in prison – as Peter Godwin has said in an interview.  No one wants to spend any time in a Zimbabwean prison not for five minutes.  This is a book well worth reading. Oh sad sad Africa.

Three diverse women who become connected. The novel is set in Cape Cod and London. Iris is the postmaster in a small town in Cape Cod.  She loves her job as the postmaster and believes that if everything was as ordered as her post office with her letters neatly filed and the American flag flying from the flagpole everyday, life would be much better for everyone.

Francie is a tall leggy blonde who is a journalist in Londona and who comes to America via the radio. She tells of the bombings and disasters of London in 1940.

Emma is the frail doctor’s wife who is left pregnant when her husband decides that he must go to England and work amongst the suvivors of the blitz. He comes to this decision partly through the talks he hears from Francie, but also when he botches a baby delivery and the mother dies. He feels reponsible.

This is an uneven book.  Both Iris and Francie are believable characters but Emma is just a little cardboard cutout – she isn’t meant to be forthright, but her inclusion in the story doesn’t add much excitement. More she is ‘everywoman’ the woman who sits at home  waiting for the mail, while her man goes to war.

For me the best part of the book was the middle section. Francie has left London and begins catching trains across France linking up with refugees on their way to Spain. As an American she can still travel freely in the occupied country.  She takes with her a recording device to gather the words from the people on the trains. This is to be real radio part of her programme being beamed back to the USA. Many of the voices are Jewish, many voices appear only for a few minutes there is a poignancy about this diaspora of disenfranchised people, children, old people mothers.

The book moves back and forth between America and England and Europe and the Postmaster continues sorting the mail and the little wife continues waiting for her husband. Harry a local who is in love with Iris coninues to look through his telescope out across the bay. He believes we will be the first person to spot a German submarine if it comes.

Although the book is called The Postmistress Iris is always insistent that in America the job is kown as that of Postmaster so I wondered about this terminology – and yes it is resolved in a subtle way. I think the end of the book is a bit of a let-down but that may be because the central portion is so strong.  Often life is like that – huge activity, great danger, and then anticlimax.

There is a quote from Martha Gellhorn a war correspondent at the beginning of the book: “War happens to people, one by one. That is all I have to say, and it seems to me I have been saying it forever.”

Perhaps that is something we forget when we are overfilled with images of troops, technology and machiner. War is people.

Publisher: Viking/Penguin  Price: $NZ39.00

It is a rare day that I cannot finish a book.  Like a good child told to eat up its vegetables before desert I usually persevere and hope that at the end the book will have been worthwhile.  This is not the case with this book.  I couldn’t finish it.  I was seduced into buying it by the luscious Scottish accent of the author who was interviewed on Radio NZ Nine to Noon programme.  I bought the book.  It is a first novel written by a Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago.  He loves writing you can tell that because he continually describes everything.  When his character Gerry Conway arrives in Belfast he doesn’t just drive his car of the ferry we get full detailing.

“I bumped up the ramp onto solid ground. I felt that lightening, that release that always comes on disembarking, as if you’d been detained against your will and have somehow made good your escape.”  etc etc etc. 

Man oh man this book needed a wiley eyed editor with a red pen.  For goodness sake just get the car off the damn boat – the description adds nothing to the impetus of the story.  So I am sorry author with the lovely scottish accent this book has not been finished.  I couldn’t even believe there would be goodies at the end to entice me on.  So I dropped it and picked up the fascinating book by Alex Von Tunzelmann called Indian Summer which has kept me enthralled as she reveals the background to partition in India.  Well written sparse description and I now have a greater understanding of India and Pakistan.

The story is set in Arles from 1888-1890.  In these two years Vincent Van Gogh painted some of his most startling pieces and broke out of the traditional style into wild colourful work.  It is during this time that he is supposed to have met a prostitute who became his lover yet managed to continue with her calling as well as being his mistress.  Although the reference to the art is true and very well researched the relationship between the artist and the young woman form the brothel is pure imagination on the part of the author.    You know when the story opens that there will not be a happy outcome and that doom sits on the shoulder of Vincent and Rachel. The historical parts of the book are well researched and the author has used much from the correspondence between Vincent and his brother Theo.  It has become somewhat of a fashion to take an artist and create a life around them.  Tracy Chevalier did it with Vermeer very successfully.  I don’t think Bundrick is quite so successful.  The relationship between Van Gogh and Rachel is not as well drawn as the narrative about the art. The picture of the brothel as a happy home for hookers is a bit hard to accept. It is interesting to look at Van Gogh’s paintings at this period of time at Arles.  The book makes the point that Van Gogh was madly creative but not madly insane and that he probably suffered from epilepsy.