Take me away

1. Kefalonia, Greece; Berlin, Germany / 2. Mellieha, Malta / 3. Cirkewwa, Malta / 4. London from the London Eye; Bempton cliffs, East Yorkshire; Yorkshire Dales / 5 & 6. New York City / 7. Rome, Italy

I am suffering from serious wanderlust at the moment; that is to say, even more so than normal. I'm attributing this to the deadly combination of having no money, feeling generally rather jaded, and - crucially - the temperature suddenly dropping to a level that can only mean autumn is here... Hence the compulsion to gather together some of my favourite photos of places I've been. It might, of course, make more sense to compile a list of all the places I'd like to go, but that would truly be a mammoth task so you'll have to watch this space! In the meantime I'll just be wishing I was on a sunny beach somewhere, while wrapping myself in fleecy blankets (seriously, it's THAT cold right now. Whatever happened to summer?!)

A/W forever

1 & 2. UK Vogue, September 2011 issue
3. ASOS magazine, October 2011 issue
4 & 5. Elle Russia, September 2011 issue
6. Whistles
7 & 8. Zara

Just some more new-season inspiration. I did some window shopping today and felt heartbroken over all the gorgeous coats and jackets appearing in the shops that I absolutely definitely cannot afford. This year I'm going to try and make lists of ABSOLUTE MUST-HAVES for a) work, b) ~casual wear~ and c) going out. How I'm going to manage this, I have no idea. So far, I'm thinking a) pencil skirts, b) an attractive gilet of some sort and c) this, with liberal helpings of leather and added slippers (the smart-flat-shoe kind, not the wear-around-the-house kind). Of course, there's always the never-ending search for the perfect tweed blazer, but I gave up on any hope of that dream bearing fruit last winter. As the money in my Paypal account is currently earmarked for bathroom storage units, photo pockets and an oil burner, I think it's all going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Book review: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magician King (2011) by Lev Grossman

Let me begin this review by saying that I really enjoyed Lev Grossman's The Magicians, the 2009 novel to which The Magician King is a sequel. I didn't think it was perfect, by any means - I wasn't keen on the protagonist, the irritating and selfish Quentin - but altogether I found it to be an original, enjoyable, and gloriously escapist read. I will admit that I am not the biggest fan of all-out fantasy, but I liked the fact that The Magicians couched its fantastical elements in a recognisable version of the 'real world', which tends to be a difficult thing to pull off. Altogether, I'd been looking forward to this follow-up since it was first announced, and have had it on my wishlist since the title was confirmed. Therefore, it was a big disappointment, and a bit of a surprise, that I really didn't like it much at all.

The Magician King picks up some time after the end of the first book. Quentin and friends are still in Fillory, the Narnia-like magical alternate world, where they now reign as kings and queens. But typically, Quentin is restless and not particularly happy; he thinks there must be something more to achieve, and he sets off on a mission to recover taxes from a remote island, taking the increasingly aloof - and powerful - Julia with him. The story unfolds as a disjointed kind of quest that never really seems to go anywhere. There are moments of excitement, but what ends up happening is repeatedly anticlimatic. It's hard to tell whether this is intentional - obviously, the whole point of the Magicians books is to subvert the cosy stereotypes usually found in this type of tale. Either way, it feels very unsatisfying. Some chapters branch off into Julia's history, which I wanted to be interested in, but the book never quite shakes off the feeling that she's secondary to Quentin, plus she's just not very likeable - not to mention the fact that her story goes beyond ridiculous in the end.

And then there's the way it's all written, which I could talk about forever. There are knowing references to Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, etc everywhere - to the point, for example, of Brakebills (this world's school of magic) actually being referred to as Hogwarts. It's like being constantly nudged and winked at, like the book is continually making sure you're 'in on the joke'. In the same vein, there's far too much swearing. I couldn't care less about swearing in books, it certainly doesn't offend me, but it's shoved into the narrative so often that it just becomes exhausting. The repeated lazy usage of 'shit' to mean stuff/things particularly grates. I presume this is all to hammer home that these characters are adults, that this world is far from whimsical despite the presence of talking animals and magical islands. It's so unnecessary, though.

Part-way through reading the book, I highlighted this passage to demonstrate a perfect example of the style:

Of course Iris had every right. That's how the system worked. She was doing Julia a fucking favor. Babysitting the noob was evidently not considered a premium assignment at Murs, and she wasn't going to pretend to enjoy it. Which whatever, but this did not oblige Julia to pretend to be grateful either. Really she ought to dog it a few times, she thought, just to piss Iris off. Show her that Julia had nothing to prove. See how long it took her to lose her shit.

I mean, 'noob'? 'Which whatever'? Fuck, piss and shit in one short paragraph for no real reason? Not long afterwards the word 'nomming' was seriously used, at which point I almost threw my Kindle at the wall. I get that the narrative is partly meant to represent the internal voice of Quentin/Julia, but god, it's irritating. And THE WHOLE BOOK is written like this. Afterwards, I had to find my copy of The Magicians to refresh my memory about the style - and yes, it had its fair share of profanity and slang, but The Magician King makes it look like a nominee for the Nobel prize for literature.

Perhaps this book will be more popular with readers more accustomed to and/or comfortable with fantasy fiction. Most of the events in Fillory, along with the climax of Julia's backstory, went too far into territory I found ludicrous and bizarre (in a bad way). I didn't like any of the characters, the interaction between Quentin and Poppy was sloppily done and unbelievable, and I really hated that Quentin was STILL hung up on the now-dead Alice having slept with Penny AFTER THEY SPLIT. Admittedly, I did at least feel compelled to keep reading right to the end; there's a few good bits, if you look for them. But it was a hard slog to finish and I doubt I'm going to be reading any further installments. Overall, sadly, this book was a mess.

Rating: 3/10

The end of an era

I've been looking back on my old blog content (which I'm archiving for posterity) and feeling rather glad that I have a record of my own outfits to use as inspiration. I'm preparing to be on complete SPENDING LOCKDOWN for the foreseeable future, so I'm going to have to make the best of what I've already got. That means adapting my current collection of summer office wear and threadbare trousers for autumn/winter. Too much of a tall order? I'm hoping adding a few 'key pieces', whatever they might be, will do the job. Good thing I have a big coat collection - although of course you can never have too many.

(Of course, it doesn't help that another ASOS magazine arrived in the post today and I am overcome with lust for various things I can't afford. Also just spotted these Topshop shoes - o bby.)

Anyway, what better way to commemorate the end of my old blog than with a montage of tiny pictures? As I'm in the middle of moving all my clothes from one house to another, it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on outfits past. So there you have most of them... in miniature. To be continued, eventually.

Book review roundup: Paul Auster

I've gone through a minor obsession with Paul Auster's writing over the last month or so, brought on mainly by hearing/reading lots of comparisons between his work and that of his wife, Siri Hustvedt (which, by the way, I understand, but there are discernible differences in style). I haven't been posting individual reviews of these books, so here's a digested roundup.


Oracle Night (2003)

Oracle Night begins with Sidney Orr, a novelist who is recovering from a severe illness, buying a unique Portuguese notebook in a rather odd stationery store. On the recommendation of his friend, also a novelist, Sidney begins to flesh out an idea for a story concerning a man who suffers a near-death experience and impulsively leaves his wife and home, resolving to start his life anew in a different city. The narrative follows both the progression of this tale and its protagonist Nick Bowen, and the 'real' story of Sidney, whose relationship with his wife Grace (the history of which is detailed in a number of footnotes) begins to flounder soon after he acquires the notebook. Meanwhile, Sidney attempts to re-write HG Wells' The Time Machine as a modern film script, turning it into an unconventional romance, and the Nick narrative also has a further strand wherein the character is profoundly affected by the contents of a lost manuscript, the title of which is Oracle Night.

I decided to read Oracle Night partly because it was billed as 'the place to start' for newcomers to Auster's work, and it proved to be a perfect introduction. It's short, but packed with detail and (as the description above probably indicates) multi-layered. There are definitely elements of the weird about this story - the disappearance and relocation of the Paper Palace and its enigmatic proprietor, the 'powers' of the notebook - but it isn't a paranormal or fantasy novel. This really appealed to me - I love the combination of literary prose and hints of the unexplained. I also LOVED the writing. Despite all the intricacies of the plot, it often seems secondary to the way the story is told, the ideas it explores. There are parallels galore and the book often touches on the relationship between fiction and reality and/or language and action. I'd have liked the story to go on for longer - but all in all, it did more than enough to pique my interest.

Rating: 8/10


The New York Trilogy (1987)

The New York Trilogy comprises a trio of interconnected stories: City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. Each of them presents a spin on the detective genre. In City of Glass, a writer is mistaken for a private detective and is drawn into the entanglements of a rich, eccentric family. Ghosts, the shortest of the three, sees a detective tasked with observing a man and becoming increasingly paranoid about his target's life, as well as the intentions of his employer. The Locked Room, which has the most traditional format, follows another writer's obsession with his childhood best friend, who has been missing for years but becomes a celebrated author some time after his disappearance.

This one is a really difficult book to review - to the point that I had to delete my first attempt and start again. At first I assumed that, although I knew the stories were interlocked, it would be possible to treat each of them as a standalone novella. However, when I reached the end of The Locked Room, I realised that the connections between the stories are so close and complex that this would be impossible; they only really make sense in the context of one another. Because I didn't fully understand the relationship between reality and fiction in these stories at the begnning, certain things initially left me feeling very frustrated. The key to 'getting' this book, I soon realised, was to recognise that much of it is symbolic, designed to explore themes - identity, perception, the importance of names, the power of stories and imagination - than to describe believable events. There's this constant uneasy feeling that nothing is quite as it seems, but not in a sensational horror-story way, rather just that everything is slightly out of kilter. Particularly memorable was a scene in The Locked Room, involving two characters discussing the enigmatic appeal of Fanshawe, the missing writer. 'The book gets stuck somewhere in the brain, and you can’t get rid of it,' one of them says. 'You can't stop thinking about it.' For me, the same could be said of Paul Auster's prose. While I didn't think this was a truly great book, the style constantly kept me coming back for more and I came away from it feeling thoroughly hooked.

Rating: 8/10


The Book of Illusions (2002)

David Zimmer is a teacher and writer whose wife and two young sons have been killed in an aeroplane crash. At his lowest ebb, suicidal and alcoholic, David sees a silent film on television and laughs for the first time since the tragedy. Thereafter, he develops a fascination with the actor featured in the old movie, Hector Mann - a minor star of silent comedies who vanished in 1929 and was never seen or heard of again. Travelling around the world in order to visit the film archives containing Hector's few movies, David channels his obsession into a book about the actor's work. However, the story really begins some time after this, when David receives a mysterious letter containing some startling news about Hector.

The Book of Illusions displays many characteristics of Auster's typical style, most noticeably the constant presence of symbolism, the perceived significance of art and the line between reality and (as the title suggests) illusion. Here, rather than the emphasis being on language and writing, the focus is on Hector's films and their visual impact, though of course the power of storytelling is still key. When David discovers that Hector made some films that were never seen by anyone else, he questions whether art has any importance if it is not shared with and experienced by an audience. There are other elements of the story that are, essentially, totally implausible. For example, the manner of David and Alma's first meeting is really quite ridiculous, as is the speedy development of their relationship. But I think this is where the genius of Auster's writing really lies, in suspending the reader's disbelief and immersing you so deeply into the story that these strange events seem believable. I can imagine that the book won't work for everyone - some may find the lengthy descriptions of unseen, nonexistent films dull (I really enjoyed them), and there's a curious... quietness about it all - a very subdued feel. This is not a deeply thrilling novel, more of a restrained but haunting little tale.

Rating: 7/10


Travels in the Scriptorium (2006)

Travels in the Scriptorium opens like this: a man, known only as Mr. Blank, is apparently imprisoned within a room. He remembers snippets of his childhood, but nothing of how he came to be in the room, and has little to no recollection of his adult life. During the course of the story, he is visited by a number of people and recognises them only vaguely, if at all. He contemplates escaping from the room, but seems incapable of attempting to discover whether the door is locked from the outside, despite the fact that he is able to move around and the room is small. To pass the time, he begins to read a manuscript on his desk, which turns out to be an account of a man's adventures and imprisonment in 'the Confederation', a vaguely sci-fi fictionalised version of America.

This book is really an extended short story, with a strong surreal flavour. It becomes obvious quite quickly that the character of Mr. Blank is supposed to represent the author - if not Auster himself, then something of the writer's spirit, perhaps the part of him that makes him an author. Blank's visitors frequently refer to themselves as 'operatives' who he has sent on 'missions', often with seriously detrimental effects on their lives. Whether the visitors are benign, or seeking revenge, is unclear, but it does seem to be the case that by the conclusion, they have 'won'. Filled with characters from Auster's other novels, and often relying on heavy use of symbolism and motifs, the story is extremely, and obviously deliberately, self-referential. Perhaps partly because of this, I was a little disappointed in it. The plot was flimsy, and I wasn't sure what the minutiae of Blank's everyday activities were meant to add to it. The story-within-a-story was interesting but didn't end up going anywhere (though, of course, that's kind of the point of it). After how much I've enjoyed the other Auster books, this left me feeling a bit short-changed, and while his talent was still evident in the prose style, it definitely wasn't a favourite.

Rating: 5/10

The Devil's Double

I went to see The Devil's Double tonight and I've got to say even if I'd hated it, I'd probably still have been making this post because of THAT BLOODY POSTER, which is either the most amazing or the tackiest thing I've ever seen in my life (not that those two things are mutually exclusive or anything). I can't stop looking at it, think I might get a life-size version painted on my bedroom wall in the new house. I'm sure the landlord will be fine with it.

But anyway, I LOVED IT. The film is based on true events - the life of Latif Yahia, the body double of Saddam Hussein's son Uday - but it's quite heavily fictionalised and cartoonish, and probably best thought of as a gangster movie rather than a 'real story'. Dominic Cooper is SO GOOD as both Uday and Latif, and also absurdly attractive (probably not really the point, in fact pretty detrimental to the point... but he is, I think it's the prosthetic nose, he should keep it on). I was also very excited by the fact that a lot of it was filmed in Malta, therefore I spent much of the film jumping around in my seat saying/thinking I've been there! I've walked down that street! I feel a disproportionately strong bond with Malta given that I only spent a week there, and this only added to my desire to go back.

To sum up, I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but when I watch an exceptionally good film I sometimes get this weird queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me nothing else is going to match up for a while and I'm going to be moping around, waiting for it to come out on DVD. I would go and see it in the cinema again, but I already did that with the most recent Harry Potter (I'm not a crazed fan, I was just drunk the first time) and since a regular cinema ticket is now £7.85 (!!!) I don't think it's a very financially viable option. So, DVD soon please.

The sky above ablaze

In February 2007 I went to see Amy Winehouse at Manchester Academy. It's a show I already had great memories of - her stunning, flawless vocal performance, the lovely chilled-out crowd and the rare, fleeting pleasure of knowing you're seeing someone at the height of their talents, in that brief period between people starting to truly appreciate their genius and the point they become subject to absolute tabloid hysteria. Since her death - and no, I still can't quite believe I have to sit and write 'her death' - those recollections have taken on a greater significance. I know now that I'll never see her sing again, and she'll never have the chance to return to the level of greatness I witnessed. As I've said before, I feel privileged to have had this experience.

At the time, I recorded some clips of her performance on my phone. I haven't watched any of them for years, and in fact, I thought they were lost - saved on some broken laptop. But last night, I was combing through my old external hard drive (actually looking for amusingly bad photos of my younger self and people I used to date - ha) and I found them.

I'm not posting these because they're in any way decent quality. They were recorded on some crap mobile phone camera (probably this, my absolute pride and joy at the time) and the sound's not great either - it cuts out during You Know I'm No Good, and Rehab is partially obscured by my shouty 'singing along'. I'm posting them because they're wonderful to me - even through the LQ-everything, the power of her voice sends shivers down my spine - and I wanted to share them.

I've never heard her sing Tears Dry On My Own better - just listen to that I'll be some next man's other woman soon. Fuck Me Pumps makes my stomach flip - the unmistakeable outline of her, the way she moved. Of course there are countless superior recordings and videos - but I haven't been able to stop watching these since I found them. I can't look away.

1. Tears Dry On Their Own 2. Back To Black 3. Fuck Me Pumps 4. You Know I'm No Good 5. Rehab

Book review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending (2011) by Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending is currently second favourite to win the 2011 Booker Prize, and it's typical of this sort of heavily lauded, critically acclaimed book. I don't necessarily mean that in a disparaging way, but I've noted before that the formula for award nominations and congratulatory reviews seems to be: well-established author + story featuring an ageing character looking back on events in their own life + much contemplation of the nature and significance of memory. This is a perfect example of the type.

The narrator is Tony Webster, who is now retired and considers his existence to have been, in the main, mediocre and uneventful, but also largely happy. In looking back on the events of his life, Tony returns repeatedly to the friends of his teenage years and the messy end of his first, largely chaste, relationship with the spiky Veronica. He initially presents his recollections of these experiences as largely accurate, but as the story progresses, we learn that all may not be as it appears - not because Tony is an unreliable narrator, at least not the type you normally encounter, but because he has excluded everything he wished to forget from his own memories. When he receives an unexpected and surprising bequest, he is forced to re-examine what he thinks he remembers about Veronica and his friends (particularly the precocious Adrian) and, in the process, begins to reconsider his whole identity, considering how his edited memories may have contributed to his character and choices.

I thought this short novel was beautifully written, and at the beginning I felt instantly compelled to read on. The idea of looking back on youthful friendships later torn apart, and slowly uncovering the reasons for this, is always an appealing one for me. Tony isn't the most likeable character of all time, but he's affable enough; his mediocrity and lack of ambition make him unthreatening, and perhaps easier to relate to than I'd like to admit. However, I was left confused by the ending. I won't go into what happens so as not to spoil it for any prospective readers, but there's a 'revelation' which seemed, to me, very much like a deus ex machina moment, and I didn't think either the event itself or Tony's reaction to it stood up to much analysis - which is perhaps why it had to be delivered right at the very end. (I also really wished Tony wouldn't keep referring to the... thing that he and Veronica would do in lieu of 'full sex'. Despite being far from explicit, it made me feel really queasy.)

Part of me would like to give this a higher rating, but I always have this slight bias against very short books. If they're poor anyway they feel totally pointless, and if they're good - like this one - I can't help but feel a bit cheated that the story wasn't more fleshed out, or that it finished when it did. In this case, I'd have liked to see more of the friends' schooldays and more pages from Adrian's diary, perhaps some of the aftermath of Tony's eventual discovery. That said, I did find Barnes's writing very beguiling, and I'd like to read more by the author at some point.

Rating: 6/10

August accessories

1. Boots, £40 reduced from £100, Office
2. Ring, £10, Topshop
3. Boots, £20 reduced from £69.99, River Island
4. Ring, £2, Primark

Attempting to build up a store of A/W-appropriate stuff before the days of having any disposable income come to an end - rather like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter - I seem to have decided that accessories are the way to go. Makes sense, as at least they'll jazz up last year's jumpers and the same two pairs of skinny jeans. I've wanted the Office boots for A MILLION YEARS so couldn't pass up the chance to grab them for £40 when one size 6 pair (FATE) turned up on the website. The River Island ones, on the other hand, I just spotted on a table of random sale rubbish, and fell in love with the glorious kinda-awfulness of them. I am willing to accept that a large skull ring with three snakes on its head is not a Style Essential, but LOOK AT IT. How could I resist that?! And the Primark ring actually fits me... unlike the £25 Galibardy original I had to sell on eBay because it was too big.

Book review: Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

Snowdrops (2011) by A.D. Miller

I actually bought this book several months ago; a handful of good reviews combined with the setting, Moscow (I've been fascinated with Russia since my teens, and wrote my university dissertation on the Russian presidency) piqued my interest, but somehow I never got around to reading it. I only remembered it after learning that it's one of the thirteen books on the longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize. Billed as 'an intensely riveting psychological drama', Snowdrops follows about a year in the life of Nicholas Platt, an English lawyer living and working in Moscow. A chance encounter with two young women, sisters Masha and Katya, develops into a friendship and, with Masha, a rather one-sided relationship. Nick agrees to help the girls' ageing aunt with the sale of her flat; at work, meanwhile, he is involved in a business deal with a shady character known only as the Cossack. The reader knows from the beginning that something or other is going to go wrong, as Nick narrates his story from a future perspective, and drops occasional hints that all is not as it seems - particularly with regards to Masha. All in all, I started this book feeling very intrigued about what turns the plot might take, and relishing the Russian setting. However, it turned out to be one of the biggest reading disappointments I've had all year.

The first stumbling block was the main character. Nick is far from likeable - immature, judgmental, sexist and sleazy, a grown man who looks down on his own parents; I think he's meant to represent the corrupting influence of modern Russia on a gullible Westerner, but it seemed more likely to me that he just wasn't a very nice person to begin with. At first, I felt his unpleasant attitude to women and apparent lack of experience with them (we learn he's only ever had one relationship, with a girl from university) were surely down to youth. I assumed he was in his mid-twenties at the very oldest, so it was a significant shock when his age was dropped into the narrative and it turned out he was 38! It's clear his 'love' for Masha is more of an obsession, but she does nothing to justify it - she's portrayed throughout as cold and almost characterless. I would have found her more interesting and perhaps even someone I could sympathise with, except there's no meat on the bones of the character. There's no suspense involved in figuring out that she's deluding Nick - it couldn't be more obvious.

The second issue was the narrative structure. For some unknown reason, perhaps in an an attempt to add an extra layer of intrigue to the plot, the author has chosen to relate Nick's tale in the form of a letter to his present-day fiancée, looking back on his time in Moscow. This is problematic on so many levels. The fiancée character isn't so much one-dimensional as nonexistent - I couldn't get any sense of who she was, and the device was so cursory it felt as though it had been tacked on after the rest of the book was already written. Apart from that, the story doesn't work as a letter - there's too much dialogue and detail, and I refuse to believe any man would be so rigorously committed to telling the truth that he'd fill a letter to his current partner with details of threesomes with strippers, how many times he'd paid for sex, how irresistably sexy he found his ex-girlfriend, how he occasionally fantasised about her sister, and so on. This all happened years before he met the fiancée, so it's not as if there's any need for Nick to 'confess', and it's obvious the author just didn't want to leave the sex out of the story and has used the conceit of Nick's absolute honesty to justify its presence. Furthermore, when the book ends with Nick lamenting his present 'thin life' and how much he misses Masha and Moscow, it's impossible to understand how on earth he could have ended up becoming engaged to this woman, let alone why he'd bother to sit down and write a lengthy, confessional document to her.

The only thing I really liked about Snowdrops was the setting. The frozen wastes, seedy clubs and shabby flats of Moscow were all evoked well and I enjoyed how the corruption and bribery spawned by Russia's history were shown to have invaded every aspect of the characters' lives. But on the whole, the book isn't particularly well-written (there's a lot of repetition - try counting how many times Nick says 'one of those...' or 'it was, I think, [name of month]') and for a story brimming with degredation and vice, it's somewhat lacking in action. In fact, nothing much happens at all. It can basically be summed up thus: some people pretend to be something they're not to get money out of an unpleasant man who thinks with his dick. Big deal! Nicholas isn't even particularly upset or affected by the loss of the money, so the final 'revelations', if they can be called that after the heavy-handed hints dropped throughout the rest of the novel, don't have much impact.

I do generally look upon the Booker as a benchmark of sorts; I've read a number of Booker-nominated novels I haven't liked much, but I have at least generally found them to be high quality, well-crafted and so on. I suppose this must have made it onto the longlist for the same reason the horrendously overrated Room was shortlisted last year (though that at least had a bit of media hype and controversial subject matter going for it). I just can't believe the panel would overlook something like Jane Harris's sublime Gillespie and I for this! But I suppose that's beside the point. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this book at all, though perhaps other readers with different tastes might get more out of it. It's certainly not the worst thing I've ever read, but even so, I think there's too many other good reads out there for it to be worth the time.

Rating: 4/10

Singles I bought on cassette, and other nostalgia

A few 'remember that?' conversations on Twitter recently, with specific reference to various articles about 80s childhoods and 90s culture on Thought Catalog, have got me thinking about everything from my favourite childhood TV to my first attempts at 'rebellion' (smuggling teenage magazines into the house by stuffing them down my school skirt) and early feminist awakening (denouncing the same magazines as part of some conformist conspiracy). When Kirsteen tweeted a link to this article, I started trying to remember all the early singles I bought, when I didn't even have a CD player. I even turned out the drawers in the cellar to see if I still had them, but I could only find my mouldy old Spice Girls cassettes, so I must have thrown the rest away. So here's what I've been able to dredge up from my memory...


Dodgy - Good Enough This was the first single I ever bought with my own money. No idea why, as I don't remember being particularly into Dodgy, nor was I ever a huge fan of happy, jangly indie-pop. But I do remember loving the B-side; it was called Nutters and basically consisted of someone repeating 'fucking nutters' over some kind of ambient beat, which at the time I thought was ~so edgy~.
Also reminds me of: Space, my huge crush on Tommy from Space, my mum's Best of the Lightning Seeds album, the time my best friend and I were obsessed with Performance & Cocktails by the Stereophonics for a term or so, that awful New Radicals song that for some reason I absolutely hated.


Republica - Drop Dead Gorgeous Second single I ever bought, and the only one among the cassette singles by a band I really loved. I adored Republica's music, and can still remember the euphoria of getting their second album Speed Ballads as a Christmas present (1998), but the main crux of my obsession was their singer, Saffron. Oh, Saffron; I wanted to be her so much, I thought - and still do think - she was both stunning and incredibly cool. At the time, I would have killed for a black bob with bright red streaks. (Good job I never had the balls to go for it, because it would've looked bloody AWFUL on teenage-me.)
Also reminds me of: anything and everything else by Republica. I could probably still sing you every one of their songs, even the terrible album-filler ones.


North and South - Tarantino's New Star North and South were a boyband - but one of those supposedly cool boybands who played instruments and sang live. This was their second single, and I don't think they lasted much longer afterwards. My purchase of this was mainly down to the fact that I had a crush on both Lee Otter (the lead singer) and James Hurst (the guitarist with the multicoloured hair, who later had it cut into an extremely ill-advised triple mohawk). It's a rubbish song - where did they get those lyrics from, a radio recording star?! - but I can remember listening to it over and over and getting excited about the, er, 'guitar' bits. Oh dear.
Also reminds me of: Five. Remember them? Shamefully, their debut album was one of the first albums I bought on CD, but in my defence this was only because I fancied Abs (lol forever). In conclusion, I only ever liked boybands if I had a crush on one of them.


Meredith Brooks - I Need This was the follow-up to Brooks' first (and pretty much only) hit, the better-known Bitch. I can only imagine me and my friends' love for Bitch was the reason I bought this single, as it's not particularly notable. However, as with the Dodgy single, I was more preoccupied with the B-side, Every Time She Walks Away - probably because I liked to fantasise that it was about me, when in reality 99.5% of the boys at my school would rather have stabbed themselves in the face with a pencil than gone out with me in 1997.
Also reminds me of: the usual suspects... Alanis Morissette, Natalie Imbruglia's first album, Lisa Loeb's Stay (LOVE), Where Have All the Cowboys Gone.


No Doubt - Just a Girl Unlike many, I wasn't a No Doubt fan in the late 90s, and had little awareness of them beyond the huge popularity of Don't Speak. It was Just a Girl in particular that got to me. I suppose the lyrics are supposed to be about the restrictions automatically imposed on girls because of their gender, but they spoke to me in a different way. As a teenager frustrated by anxiety and what others saw as shyness, with so much more going on in my head than anyone else thought, it seemed like a description of the way I was incorrectly perceived by the rest of the world. I still really like this song.
Also reminds me of: Independent Love Song by Scarlet (not quite sure why - I think it's because I have their TOTP performance of this song mixed up with No Doubt doing Don't Speak. I think that frilly shirt/red satin blazer combo may have had some influences on my fashion choices at the time...)

I definitely think if you've been around on the internet as long as I have (I started my first website in April 2000) you do start to feel part of some sort of 'old guard'; my generation (probably my specific age range, give or take a few years, rather than a whole actual generation) seems like a strange kind of bridge since we're young enough to be all over social media in all its forms, but old enough to remember things like taping songs off the radio (having to pause with finger hovering over the record button), waiting for new music videos to be shown at the end of Top of the Pops, and, later, the soul-sapping slowness of dial-up internet and the days when it took 45 minutes to download one song. I didn't even have a mobile phone until I was 18, and it's impossible to imagine having everything at my fingertips like the 'kids of today' do. I don't exactly think technology has killed excitement but I can't help wondering how much anticipation there can be about anything when it's all available in seconds at the click of a button. While I'm now a fully paid-up member of the iPhone/Kindle/Twitter generation, I look back on those days of playing cassette singles until they crackled, making Spice Girls scrapbooks, and buying both versions of a CD single for the different B-sides with the sense that I wouldn't have had it any other way.

ASOS A/W

A couple of weeks ago I - momentously - actually received a real life copy of the ASOS magazine. I've never been granted this privilege before, despite the fact that the first time I bought something from ASOS was in 2003. Anyway, I LOVE it - so beautifully styled and put together - and I'm now even more excited about the new season. This ASOS Heritage Coat is absolutely to die for and this Embroidered Cross Shirt HAS to be added to my wardrobe stat. Also on my buy-as-soon-as-possible wishlist for autumn/winter 2011: a skintight black pencil skirt and some of those slipper-style shoes.

Book review: Lucky Break by Esther Freud

Lucky Break (2011) by Esther Freud

Lucky Break tells the story of a group of drama students. Starting with their first day at the prestigious Drama Arts college, the book follows the group for a period of 14 years - from 1992 to 2006 - and as it does so the focus narrows to three individuals. Nell, who emerges as the protagonist, is an average-looking, uncertain girl who harbours a burning passion to 'make it' but comes up against seemingly relentless barriers; Dan is a talented and determined actor who finds his career options hampered by the financial and emotional strain of an early marriage and four young children; Charlie is both stunning and gifted, but after some early success she becomes totally obsessed with the idea that she is losing her looks. The chapters alternate between characters - although Nell (who for some reason I couldn't stop picturing as Kate Winslet) receives a little more attention than the others - and move through the years, charting the actors' early struggles, successes, failures, and difficulties in reconciling their 'real' lives with their strange, difficult, and all-consuming profession.

The style is sparse, skipping over years of the characters' lives with only the scantest detail, but I found it oddly addictive. However, the lack of detail was a particular problem at the beginning, when the students of Drama Arts were first being introduced; I found it difficult to keep track of who everyone was and this meant there was little emotional impact when, for instance, Eshkol slashed his wrists, or star pupil Gabriel was spotted working as a waiter - I was too busy trying to remember who these people actually were. Whole relationships happen off the page, and we're given little glimpses of something really significant - the start of an affair (or is it?) - and then the narrative switches back to another character and the thread is lost. I couldn't figure out whether this was a great narrative device (is it better that we get to imagine our own versions of the characters' lives?) or just a frustrating cop-out. David Nicholls' One Day, despite being a more lightweight novel, did this much better, skipping significant periods in the characters' lives while still managing to imbue them with warmth and humanity. In contrast, I always felt like Nell, Dan and Charlie were kept at arm's length from the reader.

I often found myself thinking the description was clumsy, the characterisation obvious, the references to the 'outside world' (eg a couple of brief mentions of New Labour) desultory, what happened too predictable - but I kept coming back to the book, even when the only way I could read it was on the tiny screen of my iPhone, and was constantly surprised at how quickly I was flying through it. I do think Freud did a very good job of relating how hard and thankless acting really is; I don't know anything about it, of course, so for all I know the whole thing might be completely inaccurate, but I often felt like the book was really shining a light into the dark corners of a lifestyle regarded by most as seductive and glitzy. Though the characters all attained some success and glamour at one point or another, I never envied them. Indeed, Freud's portrayal of the actors' constant nerves on, off and backstage, before, during and after scenes, made it seem like my worst nightmare more than anything.

Still, given that Freud is a respected author who has written six or seven other novels, and that my desire to read this book was sparked by rave reviews in the Observer, Guardian and Telegraph, the style is remarkably amateurish. Something that struck me about the writing was that I honestly couldn't see any great difference between this and authors like, for example, Erin Kelly and Kate Morton, who'd be unlikely to be thought of as literary or to get much of a mention in the broadsheet review sections. This doesn't mean I thought the book was badly written - just that I expected something more impressive from such a lauded writer. If I hadn't known who wrote this, I definitely would have guessed it was a youthful debut penned by someone who'd been an aspiring actor for a couple of years.

I enjoyed reading Lucky Break, but I doubt it'll leave any great impression on me. A few hours after finishing the book, I'm already struggling to remember much about the characters. I often read popular chart fiction titles and am pleasantly surprised when they turn out to have more substance than I expected; this was the opposite - a supposedly literary novel, garlanded with praise by the critics, that was really rather light and fluffy. One to take on a lazy beach holiday or read on a train journey.

Rating: 6/10