Reflecting different experiences…. Of the marginalised Of the forgotten Of the oppressed Of the exploited Exposing greed, injustice, and inequality And expressing solidarity with…..
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER ….those who face discrimination because of their colour, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, illness or place of birth Black Disabled Gay Women Hindu Colonialism Slavery Racism Asian Poor Muslim Trans Lesbian Sexism Child Abuse Asylum seeker Jew Sikh Refugee Brown Trans Africa South America Asia Bisexual Depression Self–harm Christian War Refugee Immigrant Bullied Buddhist
Contents
We take a look at all the news and all the book prizes Loads of great recommendations.
Diversity
Fictional Crushes
Stuff you won’t find in the Daily Mail Emigrants, immigrants and history
TV
Khadija Tahir—film critic
Philip Reeve’s Fever Crumb is just one of our Fictional Crushes
P28
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“Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.”
P5
Frances Hardinge Fly by Night “It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end”
P38
Primo Levi “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrowmindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
P34
Mark Twain In a letter of 1936 Bruno Schulz wrote: "Outside it is a cold day, hard and unyielding, full of prose and harshness. But good spirits have gathered around my bed, beside me are two volumes of Rilke that I have borrowed. From time to time I enter his difficult and intense world for a moment, beneath his many-arched skies, and again I come to myself." “For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she'd so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted.”
P48
P14
Han Kang The Vegetarian “You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after " she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.” Hester Shaw (from Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines)
P28
The Costa Awards mix the best of both worlds books that have garnered significant critical praise but are usually cracking good reads too. There are five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s novel. You can see the shortlists in full here. As usual The Bookworm read most of the books on the shortlists - this was a very good Costa year indeed. Kate Atkinson won the Novel Award with A God in Ruins, a companion novel to the brilliant Life After Life. Andrew Michael Hurley won the First Novel Award for The Loney and Frances Hardinge won the Children’s Novel Award for The Lie Tree. I would also highly recommend At Hawthorn Time and Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither as especially worthy of your time. Once the individual awards have been announced the judges come together again to choose an overall winner 3 weeks later. This year this was something of a surprise: The Lie Tree won - only
the second children’s novel to win the overall award. Philip Pullman was the last to do that in 2001 when he won for the third part of His Dark Materials trilogy, The Amber Spyglass. Anyone who reads these pages will know that we have been singing the praises of Frances Hardinge now for a LONG time. Her last novel Cuckoo Song was the most borrowed book of last year here at Swanshurst. Her novels are rewarding whatever your age. It’s nice to feel (publicly) vindicated—now its about time the Carnegie judges made the same realisation…..
Last year was the inaugural year for the YA Book Prize and we are pleased to see another great shortlist. The books were:
Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne One by Sarah Crossan Unbecoming by Jenny Downham The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo by Catherine Johnson The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness Asking for It by Louise O’Neill The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury Concentr8 by William Sutcliffe The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson Last year’s winner was Louise O’Neill’s brilliant Only Ever Yours and we’re glad to see Sarah Crossan has won this tear’s prize with One. Congratulations Sarah!
The shortlist is out and the debate begins!
The Kitschies “reward the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic”. Because YA and children’s fiction contains so many elements of fantasy and science-fiction The Kitschies remain THE prize to watch if you want to discover what’s available to stretch your imagination and expand your mind. This year the judges gave us two fantastic shortlists: for the Red Tentacle (best novel) and the Golden Tentacle (best first novel). I’ve read eight of the ten so far and enjoyed them all. Top of my list for Swanshurst students would be N K Jemisin’s fantasy The Fifth Season (see p25) closely followed by The Shore, The Gracekeepers and Tade Thompson’s fantastic Nigerian noir Making Wolf which deservedly won the Golden Tentacle. For those of you who have already discovered Margaret Atwood via The Handmaid’s Tale or her Oryx and Crake trilogy will be pleased that she won the Red Tentacle with The Heart Goes Last.
The BSFA shortlist is out too. I’d recommend you start with Justina Robson’s Glorious Angels and the winner Aliette de Bodards’s House of Shattered Wings.
The Wellcome Prize has been going since 2009. It’s a little unusual as it is for a piece of fiction OR non-fiction that “should have a central theme that engages with some aspect of medicine, health or illness”. Fictional works can be of any genre. The winner gets £30,000 - easily one of the biggest sums of money for any literary prize. This year’s shortlist is fantastic.
There are two memoirs on the list::The Outrun and The Last Act of Love, are about recovering from addiction and a terrible accident. Neurotribes and It’s All in Your Head, the other two non-fiction contenders, are studies of autism and psychosomatic illness respectively. The other two are novels. The main protagonist of Playthings is schizophrenic while Signs for Lost Children recounts the pioneering work of an early female medic. I’ve only read two of these so far, but one is my joint favourite book of the year. If you have family or friends with mental health problems or addictions that affect your life try reading The Outrun. Amy Liptrot, only 30, writes about her alcoholism and then her return to the island of Orkney as she tries to find new ways of living. It’s not just a brave book but also full of hope and optimism, and about learning to see, or remember perhaps, the wonder of the world: an awesome book that I shall return to again and again.
The Women’s Prize usually produces one of my favourite shortlists but I was slightly grumpy about this when I first saw it - I would have chosen 6 entirely different novels! Still, I will try to read them anyway. Let us know which ones YOU enjoy!
I’m not sure any of you will have read Franz Kafka’s famous story Metamorphosis yet but here is it’s first line: “As Gregor Samsa awoke
one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”. And Gregor really has become some kind of insect. No explanation is given and you’ll have to read it - its only about 50 pages - to see what happens to him and his family. There’s another, older, famous short story by Herman Melville called Bartleby, the Scivener. The narrator of the story hires Bartleby for his office. Initially Bartleby works hard but then refuses everything asked of him with the words “I would prefer not to”. It doesn’t end well! The first time I read both these stories I was confused and bemused because they don’t give explanations - the metaphors and mystery are there to ask us to look at our existence anew and to question ‘normal’ life and it’s priorities. Both authors use a technique called defamiliarization to make the reader look with fresh eyes. Are humans like bugs? Are they treated like bugs? How do families deal with change? Or in the case of Bartleby, why would someone suddenly decide to stop working? Why does silence and taciturnity freak people out? And so on and believe me I’m only just touching the surface. An interesting and funny novel with deliberate echoes of Kafka was published last year called Blackass by A Igoni Barrett. Here the main character Furo Wariboko, a Nigerian living in Lagos, wakes up one morning to find he has become white! I’m sure you can imagine how such a novel might get you thinking about racism and oppression in all its facets. Barrett’s book is well worth reading but an even better novel - an extraordinary novel -
has started to get the praise and acclaim it deserves. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian has just won the Man Booker International Prize beating off fierce competition from the likes of Orhan Pamuk and Elena Ferrante. The Vegetarian was originally published in South Korea in 2007. At 160 pages it won’t take you long to read though you should be warned it is often very disturbing and there are, as they say, scenes of a sexual nature. It has three sections and three narrators. The first is Mr Cheong, brilliantly characterised by Laura Miller in her Slate review as “an imperious dullard fully at peace with his own mediocrity”. He finds his wife Yeong-hye staring at the fridge having tossed all their meat onto the kitchen floor. From that moment she refuses to eat meat and her husband and her family become increasingly impatient with her new habits. The second section is narrated by Yeong-hye’s brother -in-law J who becomes sexually obsessed by her and the final section focuses on her sister In-hye. As the story progresses Yeong-hye becomes increasingly disconnected from everything and believes, it seems, she is becoming a plant. All we know about her is a few short extracts from her dreams, the few words she utters and her actions….and of course what other characters say. I’ve read reviews that celebrate the enigma at the heart of the novel—why on Earth is Yeonghye doing this!? Her actions and behaviour DO seem to have an alluring mystery about them, and one wonders if her act is one of transformation or annihilation. So in one sense the novel does have all the remarkable metaphorical reach of those classic works by Kafka and Melville. Yet Kang won’t let us indulge in the poetic surplus of her central metaphor - it seems that she has created a riddle only to demand that we solve it. As In-hye reflects on their lives in the final section, The Vegetarian is revealed as cry of anguish against the conformism, rigidity, oppression and violence of her society. Highly recommended!
What do you read? There are all kinds of things you can do to make yourself aware of your own reading habits. For instance do you have a reading diary? Do you know how many of the books you read in the last month were by women? By men? By people of colour? Were the characters all white? It’s a fascinating exercise. You might want to give it a go..
The Problem Why should you? Well consider this: in 2011 88% of the books reviewed in New York Times were written by white people. In 2013 the Clarke (Sci-Fi) Award had a shortlist comprised of only of men, mainly because of so few women were being published—only 16 (out of 82) of the books submitted for consideration were written by women. There are loads of facts and figures that I could quote to fill in more pieces of this appalling picture. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us as, whenever we choose to look for it, we find inequality and oppression throughout our societies. Perhaps if you’ve grown up reading books at Swanshurst you might not notice it so much. Female authors may be in the majority when it comes to YA fiction and we go out of our way to find books that reflect and examine the experiences of all kinds of people. And of course this is a great thing but that doesn't mean it could be even better—it could! Nor should we ignore the problems in journalism and publishing, or in the wider world, even if at this point in our lives it doesn't affect us too badly. So yeah, I dare you to try that reading diary for a month or two - be critical and don’t be afraid to think about all aspects of the books you read in terms of all those things we list on the cover of this Bookworm.
about the kinds of books we want. A Now read this article. What do you think? simple search of social media—especially Twitter, will inform you of organisations There may be better ways to frame the discussion. Don’t get set in your ways of and groups taking up the cause. Some people are promising to read ALL thinking and be open to arguments. women authors during 2016 for instance. Some are trying to read a larger The Payoff? proportion of books by writers of colour. Why should we want ‘diversity’ in our literature - or in any realm of life? First it On Twitter may be that whatever mix of colour, @Read_Women gender, sexuality or religion I may be, I can’t find the writers that are tuning into @ReadDiverse2016 the issues that face me, or the emotions @ReadDiversely #DiversityMatters I’m trying to deal with or the problems #OwnVoices my parents encountered. #Diversity Just as important diversity opens up our world. It’s no surprise that within Britain the most racist ideas are held by My Reading Diary so far in 2016 51 books - novels, novellas, short story those living in areas with fewer BAME citizens. To quote Damon Young (writing collections - plus individual short stories and non-fiction. about the recent Zoe Saldana/Nina 20 by men, 31 by women. Simone controversy): 11 were by writers of colour from various “But what diversity, true diversity, places around the world. actually does is fill blind spots. It They include Jackie Kay’s Trumpet about surrounds you with people with a woman living as a man throughout her different experiences and adult life; Jenni Fagan’s The Sunlight different knowledge bases who Pilgrims about a young boy you can lean on and learn from transitioning into a girl; Ann Leckie’s when necessary” Ancillary trilogy where only the pronoun Diversity then can help to counter “she” is used and many others with ignorance and stupidity AND it makes the world a bigger, richer, more BAME characters and with lots to say about colonialism and oppression, wondrous place. sexuality and gender, class and mental illness. AND it’s been the most enjoyable The Solution? start to a year’s reading in ages. Obviously it’s kinda hard for us as In short I’m not doing too badly but individuals to affect the publishing there’s plenty of scope to do better: less industry but there are all kinds of than a quarter by writers of colour—not initiatives being set up so that THEY those movers and shakers, those bigwigs good enough! Now, what about you? and fat-cats - stand up and take notice
Being Careful
The narrator of Jenni Fagan’s The Panoptican is Anais. She is 15, working class and she is TROUBLE. She takes drugs and starts riots, she fights and skives off school, she is disrespectful, she steals, she joyrides. She hates the police and any other authority figures. She is wildly out of control and it’s hard to know if you or I would be able to cope if we had a real Anais in our life. But she is honest too and hates bullies. She is fierce, charismatic and electric. I can remember a girl a bit like her at school— quite clever and funny when she wanted to be but always clashing with teachers, getting in fights, skiving, seemingly high on something or other a lot of the time. But she had a kind of integrity too—there was a hint of kindness behind the angry public façade and she never tormented people. Of course we’ve all come across disruptive people who ARE bullies and seem to have few redeeming features and it’s then much harder to sympathise with the reasons that might influence their poor behaviour. As the novel begins Anais is in the back seat of a police car being taken to a young offenders’ home called the Panoptican. For those of you who don’t know, a panoptican is “a circular prison with cells so constructed that the prisoners can be observed at all times”. In a world where we are increasingly observed in every aspect of our lives - think security cameras and social media for instance - it would seem to be quite a potent symbol for our consideration. Indeed the novel makes you think about the things that people watch for and, crucially, all the things we don’t see or want to see. In the course of the novel you discover a lot about Anais’s past and about the lives of other teenagers at the home. On one level
this might not sound too unusual but there are several reasons to recommend Fagan’s brilliant novel. First is Anais’s voice - funny, irreverent, shocking, thoughtful, defiant, tormented, sad, sincere. She has a punk heart and she is a rebel and a fighter. You’d want her on your side and you’d want to be on hers. Secondly it is worth asking how many novels concentrate on working class lives? Not many is the answer. And next how many do so without coming off as too worthy or didactic or idealistic? Hardly any. Instead Fagan gives us a novel charged with electricity and righteous anger. It rages at injustice, inequality and stupidity as it makes you laugh and cry. Thirdly, if you choose to examine them there are weird and uncanny moments in the text and philosophical ideas to contemplate too. Be warned there is a LOT of swearing, some sex and some very upsetting bits. I should point out that Fagan’s treatment of sex, sexuality and gender in The Panoptican is pitch perfect. In her new novel The Sunlight Pilgrims she puts gender firmly at the centre of the novel. It concentrates on three characters: after the death of his mum Dylan finds himself unexpectedly moving to a caravan park in a remote part of Scotland. There he meets 12 year old Stella and her Mum. Stella has, thirteen months previously, made the transition from boy to girl and is facing bullying, incomprehension and distaste from her peers and others in the community. There’s more. The novel is set in 2020. With climate change accelerating, all the cold water pouring into the sea from the Arctic is causing the North Atlantic Drift to cool precipitating a sharp fall in temperatures throughout northern Europe. When the novel begins in November it is already minus 6 degrees and getting colder and colder all the time. There are lots of reasons to recommend The Sunlight Pilgrims as it has many of the qualities of The Panoptican and I could read Fagan’s prose all day (she is also a poet) but what struck me most is this. At one point Stella ponders her situation:
“Before it was just poverty, pestilence, terrorists, paedophiles, drugs, eating disorders, online grooming, meteors skimming a bit too close for comfort. Now every single person in this hall looks like they are terrified they’re all about to become frozen corpses” So in a world going (gone?) mad, the novel is asking: How do you find ways to live and still appreciate the moments of wonder in our existence? Perhaps even with bravery, integrity and kindness in spite of all our pain and bafflement? It would be SO easy to offer answers that are banal or nihilistic. Fagan does not. I can think of no greater compliment than to say whilst reading her novels I kept contrasting and comparing with some of my favourite contemporary novelists: Ali Smith, Sarah Hall, MJ Hyland, Liz Jensen. Yep, that good! I urge you to get reading!!
When I was twelve, somebody told me a Very Distressing Thing. Apparently, Dorothea Brooke from George Eliot’s Middlemarch was not the literary heroine I thought she was. ‘Dorothea Brooke,’ read the introduction to my copy, ‘while showing admirable amounts of both religious zeal and determination to do good, fails her higher calling at the conclusion by bowing to her own selfish desires, and therefore turning away from what some might call her duty.’ My twelve-year-old self, in the throes of teenage romanticism, was deeply upset by this shocking communication. That an Oxford professor hand-picked to write an introduction to this new edition of a timeless classic could ever feel justified in criticising the romance that ruled my life at the time was awful. As was the fact that it had opened up the tiniest crack and let a sliver of doubt creep in. Needless to say, it took quite a while to work up the courage to reread Middlemarch and face Dorothea again. I mention this tale of childish disappointment and disillusionment because I feel that those are two themes that lie at the heart of this book. How to be a Heroine (or What I’ve Learnt from Reading Too Much) is delightfully witty, true - and with a title like that I would be disappointed if it was anything less. While being a blatant analysis of literary heroines of differing sensibilities and characters, it has none of the tedium one might expect from a book which seems to be based on the dissimulation of role models for girls of all ages. Instead, I can only quote the blurb of Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman, it is: ‘part memoir, part rant’ and part something else entirely. I think perhaps my favourite part was the more personal lessons discounting, of course, the stimulus for the entire book. I could not understand why Cathy could ever be considered a suitable role model, even if you are one of those desperately in love with Wuthering Heights. Other than that, I think that even heroines I wasn’t familiar with I could relate to, thanks to Samantha Ellis’ constant personal connections to the characters. Through heroines like the Little Mermaid to Esther Greenwood, Scarlett O’Hara to Lucy Honeychurch, in each inspirational woman I found if not something of myself then something of my aspirations at one point or another. But one of the main things I will take away from this experience is the fact that cool heroines are not necessarily the most sensible ones. It’s common to want to be better than average, but a frequent problem these days (especially with rising trends in YA) is the pressure that a heroine has to be... more. Many of my own heroines are entirely impractical. While I appreciate very much (and probably resemble more) the quiet Jane Eyre, is it not more tempting to aspire to be Theophile Gautier’s Madeleine de Maupin - sword-swinging, conventburning (it sounds worse out of context…) cross-dressing seventeenth century opera singer? [Mia K]
Swanshurst loves its fantasy - JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, Sarah J. Maas and Cassandra Clare: these are amongst the most borrowed authors in Upper Library. Many of you have caught the bug and gone on to investigate the violence and politics at the heart of George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones books too. Invariably however, even though there is much to admire in these books - think of Frances Hardinge’s brilliant female protagonists and the way she challenges sexist stereotypes - they are all very WHITE. Many fantasy worlds are still strongly influenced by Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy or set in re-imagined versions of Europe – often Medieval Europe. Even authors of colour living in the West get caught up in these modes of seeing and imagining. This is from Indrapramit Das’ brilliant essay Writing Global Sci-Fi: White Bread, Brown Toast (in full here): “The first sci-fi short story I ever wrote….took place in an irradiated, war-torn North America. Its protagonist was a white man, a soldier trying to escape The Man’s telepathic control. The first novel I wrote, also in my late teens, had at its epic fantasy centre a strapping white lad with, ahem, braids, unconsciously modelled on the features of Christopher Lambert’s stoic Highlander Connor McLeod. While I was writing these white boys on my Windows 98 PC, I never left Kolkata, India, where I’d spent every year of my life. The fingers dancing on that chunky yellow-gray keyboard were and are brown as (light) toast. Why the white boys? I’d say living in the aftermath of centuries of invasive European colonialism might’ve had something to do with it”
I’d urge you to read the essay in full as Das goes on to explain much more about the power and influence of whiteness in the cultural imagination of all people. Thankfully more and more writers are creating characters and environments that mirror the diversity in our world. They are also writing with an awareness of the legacy of slavery and colonialism and the reality of all kinds of oppression throughout the world today. Yusra takes up the story now with two authors at the forefront of this new movement…… Two new novels then: first Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. Cho is a Malaysian author who now lives in London. The novel is set in Regency England (think 1795 to 1837 when Queen Victoria took the throne). If you’re
struggling to imagine it try thinking about a Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) novel: you may not have read Austen but I’m sure you’ve seen one of adaptions on TV. Sorcerer to the Crown has all the romance and comedy of an Austen novel but set in alternate world where magic is omnipresent and England has an invisible border with the world of Fairy. Britain was already very wealthy then and getting wealthier, having accrued massive funds through the slave trade and its overseas conquests: remember that the slave trade was only finally abolished throughout the British Empire in 1843. Cho wants us to remember that history just as we become embroiled in her fabulous story. There are two main protagonists. The first is a former slave Zacharias, adopted by the Sorcerer Royal when he was young who, as the novel begins, finds himself inheriting the position himself. He must face the racist hostility of his peers, an England unusually low on magic and a government who want him to intervene in foreign affairs. The other main character is Prunella. She has also been adopted, by Mrs Daubney who runs a “School for Gentlewitches”. Here rich girls are taught how to control their magical powers so as NOT to use them: “Mrs Daubney knew just what parents desired her to inculcate in their inconveniently magical daughters: pretty manners, a moderate measure of education and, above all, a habit of restraint”
This gives you a sense of the dry wit and irony that pervades Sorcerer to the Crown. As you, and the men of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers will discover, ALL women are just as capable of magic as men, not least Prunella…. Cho’s book is a charming and funny adventure - stylish YA fare. N K Jemisin’s The Fifth Season however is a more grown up affair. There’s greater sophistication in the way the story is told and the way it plays with, and subverts, genre tropes. It’s also one of the most exciting and compelling books I’ve read. It’s full of wonder and OMG moments. So, imagine a world where its inhabitants are always worried about severe earthquakes, so bad that they reek unimaginable destruction, generating dust clouds that can blot out the sun for years. Now imagine that there are some amongst the people, called orogenes, who have the power to control, or cause those seismic disturbances. In the novel those people are oppressed, sometimes killed as children or else taken by the Empire to act as its servants. There are three strands to the novel each with a terrific female character - Essun, Damaya and Syenite - at their heart. At the beginning it seems like the world really is going to end as a massive rift opens up on the continent and dust clouds fill the air but Essun has more to worry about. Her husband has murdered their son and taken their daughter. She begins a journey to find her daughter at any cost…. You can, of course, simply read The Fifth Season for the brilliant story and the amazing characters. Yet there’s an awful lot in this novel the more you think about it - it’s about what slavery and oppression can do to people, the fear and loathing that systematic oppression engenders and much more. It is a truly AWESOME book and you should read it!
“[T]he very heart's-blood of literature is to draw people out of their comfort zone; to challenge and stimulate them, to wake and shake them; to present them with the new, and the unnerving, and the mindblowing. And if this true of literature, it is doubly or trebly true of science fiction. For what is the point of SF if not to articulate the new, the wondrous, the mindblowing and the strange?...” Adam Roberts writing in 2009. As we’ve already hinted at in these pages there is much on Earth that is strange - cultures, places, family members!!!! One of the best new sf writers exploring all kinds of STRANGE is Nnedi Okorafor. She is American but has Nigerian parents and her sf is strongly influenced by Nigerian history, folk tales and much more. She has already won the World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death and been shortlisted for the BSFA and the Kitschies for Lagoon whilst The Book of Phoenix has just been nominated for the Clarke Award. Perhaps the best place to start however is with this year’s novella Binti about a teenage girl from the Himba people who must leave her home to take up her place at University….in space. Unfortunately her ship is attacked…... Octavia E. Butler’s best known novel Kindred, was published in 1979 to start its journey to become not only her most famous book, but one of the most famous in the genre. But what is its genre? Somewhere in the middle of a blurred grey area between science fiction, time travel and slave narrative, Kindred has been defying genre definitions and boggling the minds of literary academics for years. The simple point of the matter is, it doesn’t fit. (A sci fi novel with a female black protagonist? With slaves? Gasp! Unheard of!) Lucky as I was to be born in this generation, I don’t see the problem. I live and read in a glorious era which indulges my liking for diverse books by oddball writers whose sales figures will never make them rich. Though still a minority, there are now numerous authors willing to articulate the viewpoints, and retell the histories
of the dispossessed and the forgotten; willing to plunge into diverse waters to make the case for equality and fairness. Yet, when I sat down to think about it, it became even more amazing that Butler wrote this novel exactly forty years ago. At a time when relations between the two cultures were strained, to say the least—when America had only just attempted desegregation—this novel focuses on the experiences of being a black woman in that period. In fact, Dana’s journey to the past serves not only as an insight into the lives of slaves, but also as a formative experience for her, defining her own life in the twentieth century in ways that she could only dream of. It makes her a different person to the one she was, forcing her to completely realign her way of viewing not only the world she travels back to—but also her own. What is perhaps most brilliant about this novel is that while it could be both historical and science fiction, it is neither—or to put it another way—it becomes more than the sum of its parts. While the presence of each in the storyline helps improve on both, it also helps Butler escape the worst parts of both genres. Dana, as a twentieth century woman experiencing these things gave them a new, fresher perspective—and for once, this was not a historical novel trying to talk about slavery. It is the history of so many people who have been enslaved. It makes all of the action more shocking, and more diverse because each of the slaves is not defined by that one word. Instead, within that category, Butler distances herself from all other novelists by adding character and realism to the tableau. It’s a brave gesture, and one that many people have been afraid to try, fearful of giving offense if they talk about slaves as anything other than the persecuted victims. They were, but in confining themselves only to that point of view, the writers rob these people of depth and character. This has started to become more common, but Butler, writing mere years after desegregation was properly explored, certainly does her part in blazing the trail. And yet, at the same time, this realism is undercut by the presence of time travel, which is why it so often classed as science fiction. But her choice of subject matter within it allows her book to escape from the common downfalls of the genre—lack of diversity being one of the major ones—by imbuing it with a most unusual cast of characters. Dana is a brave step into the unexplored territory of both racial and gender-based diversity within such a setting, and Butler writes her brilliantly. Kindred. I have now read it twice, once out of sheer curiosity and once to return to the world with a fresh pair of eyes. Butler works diversity into her novel so well that it seems to merge with the work of more modern authors and you almost don’t notice how progressive it was for its time. Whether you choose to read it as science fiction, historical, or something else entirely is up to you. Just make sure you do. Check out Eleanor Arnason’s short essay here to find out more about the history of women and PoC in science fiction [Mia K]
When we began planning this year’s Bookworms (eons ago) I discovered one of the Year 10s had been discussing fictional husband material with her mum at the weekend. She will remain nameless but her truly weird and wonderful choices were Skeletor, Bertie Wooster and Saracen, the seriously brilliant goose from Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night. So, I thought I better ask the teachers who their fictional crushes were too….. The Rules? Well this is what I said: “I'd prefer characters from books but you can include characters from cartoons, comics, games.......and, if you can begin to separate out the character from the actor or actress, films. Please don't just give me names. I want a paragraph or two. They can be current or from your childhood. Humour, strangeness and genuine passion will be appreciated!” I’m pretty sure that most people will be expecting me to say Princess Leia in a gold bikini but these things are more complicated than that. No one character will do – only a hybrid of different characters. So let’s take a melting pot and add in the sarcasm and caustic wit of CJ (The West Wing), the independence and strength of Faith (Buffy), the activism and can do attitude of Padme (Star Wars), the sheer wonderful essence of Sugar Kane (Some Like It Hot), the voice of the Cadbury’s caramel bunny and the inappropriateness of Marty’s Mum (Back to the Future). And, OK, you can put the final result in a gold bikini of you want; I won’t grumble. Alternatively just give me Jessica Rabbit and I’ll die a happy man. [Mr Allberry]
From the top: Skeletor loses out to He-Man again; Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster; erm, a goose; Jessica Rabbit and Tank Girl
Tank Girl: When 2017 comes I hope that she’s at my side. Hermione Weasley: (Ron gets killed in a freak washing-up accident). Best witch in the world, what else is there to say! Fever Crumb (from the Philip Reeve novels): Far better to have a ‘super’ human by your side, help me keeping my bike in good shape with a few additional lasers or rockets [Mr Turner]
As a navel gazing student I was of inevitably a fan of unrequited love. So I felt an affinity to Will Ladislaw in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and the object of his love, Dorothea, cruelly kept apart by social conformity, integrity and honour. He was such a tortured young soul who just could not keep his passion under control and was prone to hyperbole, “There are certain things which a man go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that the best is over for him.” When they finally succumb to their passion and love it is in a storm with thunder and lightning as if the forces of the natural world were reflecting their inner turmoil, “and the light seemed to be the terror of hopeless love.” I have read the pivotal chapters so many times and have the key pages noted down in the back of my copy so I can go to them any time I need to indulge in my crush and the all-consuming emotions he feels for the love of his life: ‘Please remember me.’ She said, repressing a rising sob. ‘Why should you say that? As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else.’ Oh swooooon….. [Ms Wheeler]
I’ve just read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy. In the first book Justice of Mercy is a huge spaceship with hundreds of ancillaries reanimated humans given cybernetic upgrades and programmed with the consciousness of the ship. But the ship is destroyed and only one ancillary remains: Breq. Part ship’s consciousness, part human, part super soldier, Breq is also moral, smart, politically aware and kicks ass magnificently well. Otherwise, some of the great classic novels of the 19th century featured women, dissatisfied and dismayed with their restricted role in society, trying to throw off their straightjackets. I would particularly like to snuggle up with Emma Bovary. I also used to have a thing for Estella in Great Expectations. If I could be a teenager again I’d want to grow up and grow old with Hester Shaw from Philip Reeve’s brilliant Mortal Engines. Finally, Tom has various crushes in Tom and Jerry episodes but never has much luck. The hottest is undoubtedly Tara in Texas Tom. What all of this says about me I’m not entirely sure… [Mr Beniston]
I’m not really in the market for a husband right now but if I was that way inclined, I think I’d want:…. ….RUBEUS HAGRID – He’s tall, dark and cuddly but when needed he will protect you to the bitter end. He is a great friend, loyal and kind (always she’s the best in people). He’s good with children, animals and all things wizardly. Enjoys the outdoors and gardening. See here [Mr Wells]
Obviously my first choice was Condor Man because he was a superhero AND a normal person and he also looked a lot like my second choice of… ….Frank Spencer! Had the biggest crush on this character and was upset that he was still married to Betty at the end of the series! Was convinced I would be a better choice! Finally… Robin… I already have the same name (well Robbins!) seemed like a perfect match! [Ms Robbins]
From the top: Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid; Rufus Sewell is a handsome Will Ladislaw; Tom and Tara; Leo as Jay Gatsby. And to the right: Erm….Frank Spencer and Robin!
Aslan: Definitely a childhood choice- as well as being the king of everything he also seemed very forgiving which I thought would come in handy, and I like lions. Jay Gatsby: Built an empire for the woman he loved and very good looking by all accounts. I can overlook the criminality and pink suits for the mansion, his belief in true love (even though he was wrong) and the fact that I could always go for tea with Nick Carraway if I wanted a more intelligent and cynical conversation. Benedick (Much Ado): My current choice-because he's a match for Beatrice and very witty and entertaining. And probably quite rich. [Ms Underwood]
STUFF YOU WON’T FIND IN THE DAILY MAIL* *Still the MOST used website in the 6th form library!
The Scottish Book Trust put up some brilliant articles and lists. With this one you can feed your wanderlust from the brilliant travel writing of these 15 women.
Beyonce fans? Here are ‘Ten books to read after you’ve watched Lemonade a million times’. Good list!
This is a bit random but who doesn’t like a good sing along. James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke is brilliant and the perfect inspiration for all you crooners. The full list is here. My favourite so far is Sia: “I was born in a thunderstorm. I grew up overnight…...”
Most of you will not have heard of James Tiptree Jr, an American science fiction author. This was a pseudonym: she was a woman called Alice Sheldon who was in fact a doctor of psychology (check her out on Wikipedia to learn about her life). Sheldon has a been a massive inspiration to writers ever since. Her influence is celebrated in a new book called Letters to Tiptree and you can get a taste by reading Gillian Pollack’s letter here.
Good article at Brain Pickings on Eleanor Roosevelt, Science and the Humanities.
So, have you caught the Elena Ferrante bug yet? I hope so because the worldwide adulation for Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels is well deserved—they are brilliant. The books chart the friendship of two young girls Lila and Elena as they grow into adulthood. Elena Ferrante is also a pseudonym—no one knows her real identity. She has said “books once they are written, have no need of their authors” There’s an excellent interview here.
Sometimes it’s pure chance that you can start thinking about complicated issues with the sophistication they deserve. Late last year, feeling a level of despair about the way Syrian refugees are being treated, I came across this article about Anne Frank. It seems that her family, like many European Jewish families, were denied entry into the USA. If Anne had been allowed a visa perhaps she would be alive now today: 86, maybe even a writer still. A little further investigation and you can find out about the reaction in Britain against Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s: "Of all the groups in the 20th century, refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as 'genuine', but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy." [see The Guardian article here] So the idea of a ‘refugee crisis’ and of Western governments abdicating responsibility and of the media whipping up racism is nothing new: indeed it is all too familiar. The effects of war, inequality and, increasingly climate change, mean that the 21st century will continue to mean that mass movements of people are forced to travel from their homes and across the globe. So we can’t afford to ignore the plight of these refugees, emigrants and immigrants - for all manner of reasons: because their fate is inextricably linked to ours, because to ignore their plight would be to absolve ourselves of any responsibility when surely it is a question of brotherhood and sisterhood and the humanity of us all and because whatever the racists and the nationalists tell us, history shows us that peoples have always moved and adapted and integrated. Thus by the time the United Nations Holocaust Memorial
Day came around on January 27th I was more than ready to start connecting the threads of history together. It somehow felt necessary to learn more about the waves of Jewish emigrants that sought to escape the increasing racism and brutality of the Nazi regime in the 1930s; more about the Holocaust, more about the experience of emigrants and immigrants throughout history; more about what is going on in Syria; more about the plight of refugees around the world; more about what WE might do to help. Thankfully there are a host of books—non-fiction and fiction that you take a look at to get more informed.
If you want to discover more about Word War 2 and the Holocaust books by Lawrence Rees and Ian Kershaw (just out in pbk) are a good place to start and if you want a little more detail on the plight of refugees try Outcast Europe by Gemie, Reid and Humbert. Sarah Helm’s If This is A Woman is an extraordinary history of Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women. There are numerous memoirs by survivors of the Holocaust - Khadija writes about Primo Levi’s very famous The Periodic Table on P38, but a recent one is Marcelline LoridanIvans’ love letter to her father But You Did Not Come Back. Robert Winder’s Bloody Foreigners is now something of a classic and a must read if you want to refute the silly arguments of any racists in your life when it comes to the truth about the waves of immigrants that have settled in the UK. Otherwise there some excellent new books about the current plight of refugees around the world by Ben Rawlence and Patrick Kingsley. The best books to cover the war and crisis in Syria are Burning Country by Robin YassinKassab & Leila Al-Shami and The Morning They Came For Us by Janine di Giovanni.
Many of you will know that the Nazis banned many books and burned them. There is a list of the banned authors here. You might not recognise all the names but some you will. It doesn’t matter - repressive regimes around the world have banned books, and occasionally burned them too, throughout history. Democracies ban books too - do a bit of research into all the books banned from schools and libraries in the USA over the years. In Sarah Helm’s history of Ravensbruck (our review in will be in the next issue), she tells the story of one of the female prisoners, Hanna Sturm - a carpenter - who managed to get a copy of War and Peace and smuggle it back to her bunk. For a few weeks afterwards, until they were caught, she and a few other women she trusted had a reading group on Sundays where they took it turns to read, whilst one of them stood guard. Consider what an incredible risk they took when every part of their day was regimented, when they were watched so closely and when the punishments for disobedience were so harsh. When Hanna was caught she was placed in solitary confinement in a small wooden cell for months. I’ve never got round to reading Tolstoy’s great novel - I’m not one of those people who believes you should read all the great classics out of duty - art should be about enjoyment, desire and discovery. BUT, with everyone watching the BBC adaption and now that I’ve discovered Hanna’s story I’ve decided that this is the inspiration I need. So I am hereby instigating the War and Peace Book Club. There are three of us so far who will try to read it before over the summer. Please come and let us know if you want to join us. AND please bear in mind that this is NOT a guilt trip “some women persecuted and murdered by Nazis read this book so we must too” - see it more as an inspiration and an invitation. And if you’re bored after 50 pages...feel free to give up. Philip Hensher wrote this lovely little guide in the Guardian.
Fahrenheit 451 is one of the science fiction novels of the 20th century. It’s a surreal read, but overall, however strange it may be, there’s a reason it’s mentioned in the same sentence as books like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. So why? What makes it so special? The entire dystopian genre has always held a strange appeal for us humans, expanding from the strange ideas of some oddball men a few dozen decades ago into what it is now. But Fahrenheit 451 has earned a special place in the ranks of dystopian novels. And that is probably because it accentuates what draws people towards the genre in the first place - that frightening sense of plausibility that haunts every page. That constant longing to move forwards and leave the past behind. That illicit addiction to destruction. Rebellion, on however small a scale. Book burnings. Written in the decade after the conclusion of the Second World War, the world was still in chaos, left reeling by the actions of the Axis countries. In this book, Bradbury explores a possible future in the light of all that had just passed. Because now people have seen what humans are really capable of, they are going to have to face up to it. What I found most intriguing about this novel was—and I apologise for following the crowd—the burnings. The only real explanation for these is given briefly somewhere around the mid-point of the novel: the human race started to get faster, move more quickly, want more. People did not read. They did not need to read. They did not want to read. Frankly, I think that’s utter tosh. So I looked further, deeper, at the other explanations offered. Another reason given is that books cannot be borne because they are always offending some minority or other; they prevent equality. There are so many things said in books that it is impossible to go through life with them feeling nothing about them. A common solution to this in the past has been censorship—look at America; Christian as it is, so many books have come to offend the few (somewhat judgemental) people who control the book lists that several masterpieces have been banned/almost banned. Take the Catcher in the Rye. Take His Dark Materials. Take (and oh, the irony!) Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. (Apparently, it’s a ‘real downer’.) People will always be afraid of things they cannot control. The Nazis alone burned a quarter of a million books while in power, while their children stood by, watched and learned and saluted the flames. It wasn’t the books themselves they feared, but the ideas contained within them. To put it simply, books are nothing without the people behind them. And people are nothing without their ideas and beliefs, gleaned from the place where their predecessors poured all their own ideas—that is, books. When Mikhail Bulgakov stated his much quoted line, ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’, he wasn’t just talking about the white pages filled with black squiggles that could mean any old thing. He’s talking about what the Soviet authorities were afraid of—the ideas within them. And that is in the end why I found Fahrenheit 451 such a thought-provoking read. It recognises the ‘danger’ in books—but books are only dangerous so long as free thought and speech is prohibited, because that is what people pour into them. All the unsaid things in the world, all the rebellions, however small, all the vestiges of the past. Bradbury had it right. Books are dangerous. They will carry ideas like a virus—they will infect you. [Mia K]
Here Khadija writes about Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table
Maybe it’s a little surprising to find that The Periodic Table is the Royal Institute’s ‘best science book ever written’. After all it’s a book of anecdotes, fictional stories and human emotion; all of which you might think scientific writing is averse to. Yes, there is plenty of discussion on chemistry and science but do not go in expecting to just learn facts about the periodic table or its elements. The Periodic Table is Primo Levi’s autobiography, a very unusual and distinct one. His life is told through a series of short chapters, each named after an element from the periodic table and then used as a very loose theme throughout the chapter. The elements are like stepping stones, each element relating to a memory or point in his life. The book begins with Argon, an inert, so called noble gas which Levi uses as a starting point to discuss an equally un-reactive uncle who stayed in bed for 22 years. The rest of the chapters follow a similar structure, but not quite; sometimes the chapter’s element doesn’t take centre stage, but lurks in the background. Some of the best parts are when an element is simply being described. Described in an incredibly striking manner; it is seen from a whole new perspective and as the chapters go by we see these elements come alive. These cold, lifeless, austere substances become as astonishing and magnificent beings with personalities of their own. In Hydrogen the childish excitement of being in a chemical lab is almost palpable, in Zinc an experiment using Zinc at university is used to describe his general experiences at university and in Phosphorus he falls in love but never quite manages to tell the girl in question. Each event is recounted elegantly and is equally thoughtful and wise; he seems to have gained a more accepting outlook on life when he wrote this book. He states ‘We are not dissatisfied with our choices’ to losing love and ‘a throw of the dice deflected us onto two divergent paths, which were not ours’, a thought about what was and what could have been. Despite this he rarely complains about this or anything else, and later in the book it becomes clear that despite everything he led a satisfied and content life.
Levi’s style of writing is like no other; it has a life of its own and demands you pay attention to every single word he uses. No word is left out; each is chosen with care and carries the weight of its sentence with it. He manages to eloquently describe the most harrowing of situations; in the chapter Cerium he recounts his experience of Auschwitz and it is in no doubt a difficult chapter to read. History books only manage to state the general facts and statistics of this atrocity, making the reader feel detached from the situation. But this painful first-hand account fully realises the horror of it and that those who did survive still had to live with the memories of it. In the end what saved his life was the element Cerium; he came a store of it by chance and fashioned sticks so that they could be used as cigarette lights, he bartered them for food. The chapters that follow are underpinned by hope: after some time he accepts that he survived something that many could not and begins to rebuild his life and for the large part works in a varnishing factory. Though for a while he runs a chemical lab out of his partner’s parent’s home. There is also vaguely humorous chapter where he attempts to find chicken and python excretion in order to obtain uric acid and a chapter where a customer asks him to analyse a bag of sugar with arsenic in it. All accounts of his everyday life. It is clear especially after this chapter, why he so wholeheartedly loved chemistry; it followed him in every step of his life and was his moral strength in difficult times. It has become moulded onto his life and has left a lasting impression, he is inextricably linked to it. The Periodic Table is a book that discusses science and the effect it had on the author’s life, but it most definitely isn’t just a ‘science book’. This is a label I would use sparingly and with great hesitance if I were to describe it, because the label undermines its significance and value. Not only is it the memoir of someone who survived Auschwitz and managed to rebuild his life but of someone ordinary who saw life in an extraordinary way simply due to Chemistry.
Jessica Jones On 20th November 2015, Netflix released a thirteen episode series following Marvel’s Jessica Jones — and believe me when I say, thirteen is not enough. Like its fellow Netflix production Daredevil, this show takes place in Hell's Kitchen but is drastically differs to the tale of Matt Murdock, the most obvious contrast being, of course, the gender of its leading role. Representation in the media is so incredibly important and Jessica Jones manages to break through the barriers of, not only patriarchy, but also diversity of race with characters such as Luke and Malcom, both main characters and largely influential to the plot. As the protagonist, Jessica manages to be strong, not only due to her superhuman advantages, but in the way she continues to fight even after experiencing rape and manipulation at the hand of Kilgrave. But she is not strong at the sacrifice of relatability, in fact far from it. Jessica Jones struggles with her situation and the show does not ignore the decrease in her mental health but instead accurately portrays the hardship and how she deals with it. This show depicts such realist themes that Netflix have been described as “bold” to include them. But they did none the less and it massively improves the show and sets it apart from the countless other superhero tales. Unfortunately, some viewers may be able to relate to some of the topics explored in this show (rape, controlling relationships, mistreatment of children etc.) however, I think that this just makes it all the more important that hardships such as these, that people experience every day, are represented in the media and not swept under the metaphorical rug. So I think praise is due, for a show well made, which modernises the comic and presents such real themes without straying too far from the plot. And all the while maintaining a high standard of acting, cinematography and script. I would highly recommend it to anyone 15+ and eagerly await a second season. [Rebekah Jennings]
Other shows like Sense 8 and Shadowhunters will be included in the next edition. If you want to write about diversity in TV let us know asap.
Once again Khadija pilots her own one person rocket ship to the stars - or one particular star at any rate, I think she has set her coordinates for that dreamy erm... old man Colin Firth [she is such a weirdo]. Otherwise she continues her journey into a universe of cinematic wonders. This time she discovers 2 modern gems and takes issue with last year’s Oscar winner Boyhood. Is she right to skewer this movie as dull with extra middle class, dull white bits. I think she is! Compare it with Céline Sciamma’s exciting and highly relevant Girlhood if you dare! I kind of appreciate the effort that went into Boyhood—the cast met up and filmed for a month over a twelve year period, but the more I think I about the more I dislike it. A long-term project such as this understandably took a lot of commitment and dedication from everyone involved to complete and it demands respect and admiration, and it definitely got plenty, more than it deserved ; yes it is impressive that Linklater tried so hard and yes this made the film all the more charming and realistic (I don’t think I was as charmed as some people though), but I feel as if this fact alone towers over the film and nothing else besides this is really discussed. The performances are unconvincing; once the children grow out of their cuteness they seem to morph into these emotionless cardboard cut-outs who feel as two dimensional as they look. The adults are no better except Ethan Hawke. I don’t understand why Arquette received an Oscar for her role, her performance wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was nothing extraordinary. Most people will diagnose my dislike of this film to be due to my dislike for slow, uneventful films but I really have no problem with those films, some of my favourites are slow burners, but when they are like Boyhood, where literally nothing meaningful happens, then I do have an issue. The film wants to be a realistic picture of working class America but I don’t think it succeeds - it just becomes one more film about dull white middle class America instead. Many of the sentimental moments felt fake and the dialogue was clunky but above all the main actor was not good enough to have been able to carry the entire film. In the end, my dislike may well be due to the fact that I found the film to be something I couldn’t relate to, but this doesn’t mean that main reason why many find it so good is simply because of a gimmick; but as many have hailed it to be, it is no masterpiece.
#OscarsSoWhite #BlackLivesMatter So, are you keeping up to date with what’s going on in USA? Er, Donald Trump anyone? Police officers attacking and killing people of colour seemingly on a weekly basis? Racism exposed in every part of society? Thankfully though, people are fighting back and raising their voices in opposition: a deep groundswell of anger and resistance that is slowly and surely growing into a movement. At the Oscars only white actors and actresses were nominated in the four top awards (for the second year in a row) despite films like Chi-Raq, Lila and Eve, Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation garnering critical and commercial success. We can only hope that the debates go on to produce real changes, in front of the camera and behind it too. Furthermore Carol, easily one of the five best films made last year in ANY country, and WAY better than most of the Oscar bait that made it onto the Best Film list, won nothing. Was it because it was a lesbian love story...that doesn’t end in tragedy….by any chance? [You’d be surprised perhaps by how many movies that chart the lives of LGBT characters end in tragedy] Some of you will be glad that Leo finally got an Oscar - he certainly is a great actor - but far more significant was his speech: “Making The Revenant was about man's (sic) relationship to the natural world. A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.”
That, I think we can all agree is
#TrueSpeak
Spring Movies Spring brings the usual mixture of Hollywood fare that makes me tingle with apprehension and dread. Did you seen the trailer for Batman v Superman? Let alone the actual film! I mean, have you? It’s made by Zach Snyder—think Sucker Punch, think Man of Steel - a guy who wouldn’t know how to make a film even if Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese spent 3 years of their lives teaching him, patiently. I’d rather boil my head in a vat of molten porridge than waste my money on THAT. Just as pointless I imagine was The Huntsman: Winter War—more useless CGI with little to say? On the positive side three women over 30 have been cast alongside Chris Hemsworth: Jessica Chastain (38), Emily Blunt (33) and Charlize Theron (40). Slightly unusual that, though of course they’re all white. Ho hum. Captain America: Civil War has expectations to meet. The last Captain America film was, surprisingly, the best superhero film in AGES - yeah, not saying much I know - so what did you make of the new one?. For the more discerning film fans in the 6th Form, now is the time to see films in the UK that did well on last year’s festival circuit. You can see films like Tale of Tales, Dheepan, Green Room, Mustang and Son of Saul at the Electric and the MAC or out on DVD soon
Inside Llewyn Davis (2014) is a Coen brothers film set in the early 1960s starring Oscar Issac before Star Wars: The Force Awakens took him into the stratosphere of film stars. In this film Isaac's character is kind of unlikeable but you will end up feeling like he got the rough end of the deal in life. He plays a deeply cynical and volatile musician - a failing musician really, finding it hard to make any ends meet. He has to impose on friends for a bed to sleep in and for a good meal. Basically, he's finding it hard to stay alive, or to put it in a better way, simply exist. Which is something he talks about in the film with his sister; she suggests he rejoin the merchant navy but he puts an end to the suggestion by saying that he 'doesn't just want to exist'. We’ve all probably felt this and is certainly a Oscar Issac before he became Poe Dameron sentiment that many folk musicians and others (stupid name!!) in Star Wars and who is that artists share in general, that creating art gives in the middle looking very different…. their life meaning and significance and without it, it is simply devoid of those things. This makes sense because the moments in the film when Llewyn is at his best is when he is performing. These moments feel like rocks that support him as he floats through his life - he seems honest and passionate. At times it is hard to discern what he exactly wants with his life. While he seems like he greatly enjoys performing his music, he still treats it like a job that he only does in order to pay the bills. But then he still wants the integrity - he acts that he doesn’t really care for the money and just wants to make music. He does change his mind at one point, battered into submission by a string of rejections and a run of bad luck and tries to join the merchant marines but that seems to lead to more complications and he ends up being even more adrift then before. The cinematography is subtle and understated and captures the atmosphere and feel for the era perfectly. The washed out blue, grey, beige and white wholly emulate Llewyns’ disposition, as does the cold weather trough pathetic fallacy. The films’ structure is intricate and thoughtful; the beginning of the film is shown to be the end (and vice versa), which suggests that perhaps Llewyn never manages to get out of this loop and that he never really manages to go forward. This is just one of the reasons why the film is so brilliant; everything is done with care and subtlety and small things like this give it depth and richness.
If you were following this year’s awards season you’ll know that Brie Larson won the Best Actress award for her performance in Room. Keen cineasts would have already been aware of her potential after seeing her in Short Term 12, a warm, compassionate and incredibly realistic film which will definitely reduce anyone to tears at some point or another. Larson gives a very affecting performance as a care home worker trying hard to provide a caring environment for children who have seen one predicament after another. As the film progresses we find out that she herself was in the same position as these kids which makes her character all the more heart breaking. Such a shame that she didn't get more recognition for this role. The actors playing the children all give wonderful and sensitive performances, which must be partially due to a very good screenplay; the dialogue really truly is unbelievably convincing. What the film successfully avoids is becoming too saccharine or overly sentimental which would have lead it to becoming another Hollywood feel-good film. It isn't manipulative and thankfully the soundtrack is unobtrusive. Some of the most touching and painful moments came when the children expressed themselves and their feeling through their preferred mediums. One of them used a short story and another a rap. This made sure that the message came across sensitively but wasn't overwrought. However, there were still some flaws; the shaky camera work just didn't look or feel right and was counterproductive as it undermined the emotional impact of some of the scenes. The cinematography also felt a little bit lacklustre, though the emphasis on various people's hands fitted well into the story. But on a good note, it was well structured; the end of the film almost mirroring the beginning and the chase signifying that the children's lives still carry on with all their ups and downs.
Reviews of the latest books by Sarah Pinborough, Louise O’Neill, Patrick Ness and Marcus Sedgwick.
We celebrate the release of the new book by the creator of the Everyday Sexism Project - Girl Up
PLUS Sarah J Maas
Carnegie winner Summer movies And….. Why are adults reading so many YA novels?
We take a look at some of the Jewish writers that were persecuted by the Nazis and by the Soviet Union. Two of the greatest short story writers were shot by the regimes: Isaac Babel in a Russian prison in 1940 and Bruno Schultz in the Drohobycz ghetto in 1942. Irene Nemirovsky has only recently become famous after Suite française was published posthumously. She died in Auschwitz aged only 39.