The Breathing by Mary-Ann Constantine

This is a powerful collection of short stories, tightly written, which leave you wondering about the past, the future, the wider story that has not been told.

In most of the stories there is some element of fantasy or surrealism which is handled well.  A hint perhaps of some untold mythology that is intriguing, but could so easily, in less skilful hands, have become laboured or over-bearing.

Within this context of myth and magic what is captured and brought out is a very strong sense of “ordinary” humanness, the characters within the stories are entirely believable – indeed you have the sense that these are not only people you could bump into in the street, but in fact people you already know.

To Bury the Dead by Ignacio Martínez De Pisón

The Spanish Civil War remains both a fascinating and deeply tragic moment in history.  It was a microcosm in which the true, and mostly unflattering, colours of the full range of society and politics were revealed.  This account is both a narrow slice of the story and yet also a retelling of the “big” story.

It is a book about José Robles’ death, a writer I have never read, who moved in literary circles, the output of which I have also never read, and so at one level the major result of reading this account was the sense of how poorly educated and ignorant I must be.

There were moments when I was gripped by the tale, and moments I felt lost.  It is a search for the truth of José Robles’ death, and yet it uncovers, as far as I could tell, not one ounce of new information about that event.  But that is the great truth of the Spanish Civil War, it is one never ending hall of mirrors – the more you reach for the “truth”, the reality of it, the further that sprite darts away from you. 

For me, having read a little about the Spanish Civil War there was no great revelation, (and for someone who has not at least a working knowledge of the conflict this is I think a book in which you would flounder).  The interest was rather a closer look at the patina of the essentially familiar.

One irritation is that this is a book in translation and they translated the titles of source material in the text with no indication of the original language (or availability of English versions).  Therefore, turning to the bibliography to find the details of the many interesting follow up reads what one finds is a wall of Spanish.  That most works about the Spanish Civil War referenced by a Spanish writer are written in Spanish is not my complaint, but it would have been a simple task for the translator to have some notation in the text that would have told the simpleton monoglot like me that a work was inaccessible.

The Phenomenon of Welshness by Siôn T. Jobbins

My first reaction to this collection of essays is that it is surprisingly angry. 

This will in part be due to there original composition as columns in the magazine Cambria – it is the columnist’s job to take a position and spark debate. 

But part of the surprise is also the exact root of Jobbins’ anger – “Welsh” political life is characterised, or at least caricatured, by mildness.  Those who champion a “Welsh” identity tend to be seen as cultured and reasonable not impassioned and argumentative.  Therefore I think Jobbins would welcome my surprise.

The other thing which was not entirely expected was the intensity of focus on the Welsh language – again the lack of such an expectation is at the heart of Jobbins’ argument.  The fact that the place of the Welsh language within the “Welsh” identity is contested is one of the key stumbling blocks to an effective nationalist movement within Wales.  There is a need to assert that, while as an individual you don’t have to speak Welsh to be Welsh, a Wales without a living Welsh language would be fundamentally diminished as a nation.  

The case which Jobbins puts, convincingly, is that the Welsh Government and Welsh political establishment, of all shades including Plaid, do not take the language seriously.  Devolution has if anything degraded the status of Welsh, it was part of the rhetoric of the fight to bring powers “home” to Wales – but with those powers won the language is treated as much as an inconvenience by decision makers in Cardiff as it was by decision makers in Whitehall.

Jobbins suggest that this lack of confidence and/or commitment in the language is a window deep into the soul of the nation – and what you see through that window is a black hole…

These punchy essays would be thought provoking reading even if you have no vested interest in the credibility of a Welsh identity.

The Cross and Creation in Christian Liturgy and Art

The Alcuin Club’s collections are normally rich and highly rewarding reading, but not on this occasion.

I am sorry to say that if I was allowed just one word for this book I would have to go for “rambling”.  It does includes an interesting miscellany of reflections on various artworks but I would have to agree with Nicholas Cranfield’s review in the Church Times and say that the application of a strong editorial hand would have been of great benefit to both Christopher Irvine and the reader.   

For example when he mentions Constantinople he feels the need to tell us this is now Istanbul and lies on the Bosphorus - one doubts that many readers who pick up this work would actually be ignorant of these facts, but even if they were, these facts appear to me to be entirely irrelevant to the substance of the point at hand. 

While I would agree with the broad assumptions of the book I do that despite it not because of it.  It does not, in itself, deliver a compelling argument.  It is only with concerted effort that one is able to keep track of it’s underlying arguments as you range far and wide over the details of particular artworks or background descriptions of Christian theology. 

What is also puzzling is who Irvine thinks the audience will be. He gives such lengthy summaries of basic aspects of Christian theology that you have to assume he is catering for the reader with no knowledge of the Christian faith other that which is imparted within the covers of this volume – there are many people in such a state of knowledge but whether they would ever be drawn to read this work is I think doubtful. 

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

I read Victoria Hislop’s The Island and now my mother has presented me with The Thread to read as well.  While I enjoyed The Island I completely failed to engage with The Thread, and it was in something of a state of irritation that I abandoned it mid way through.  

Perhaps I should warn you of spoilers ahead but then again one of my complaints with the book is that Hislop herself begins with a massive spoiler. The old and happily married Dimitri and Katerina meet their Grandson and this gives the “excuse” for their reflection on the events of their early life that is the rest of the book.  This device relieves you from the burden of worry at any point within the tale because you already know that D and K will live happily ever after.   

I also found this prologue pointless as the rest of the novel is written from the view point of the omnipotent anonymous narrator; it might make sense if the rest of the story had actually been narrated as one of other of D and K’s recollections - but it isn’t and therefore it doesn’t. 

My other major complaint is that this is the lightest of literary outputs and therefore it is, to me, distasteful that it uses ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust as its window dressing.  It is not that these events can not be the subject of fiction but that such events demand the highest of standards – it is not good enough to be mediocre when you speak of the greatest of human tragedies. To be saccharin sweet is a denial of the reality. 

Hislop over plays the idea that Thessaloniki was this completely happy and tolerant cosmopolitan city where all religions lived side by side, and overlays this with a simplistic dichotomy the happy poor and discontented rich.

I guess that in such a fanciful narrative to question plot inconsistencies is just foolish (like saying that plot twists in Dr Who don’t make sense – but fully accepting the credibility of his time machine) However I remain puzzled that after locating her mother Katerina does not suggest that rather than her going to live with her Mother, who had now married a brutal bully of a husband, her Mother comes to her -her Mother is supposed to be a talented seamstress – surely she would have found ready employ along with Katerina with the Jewish Tailors next door.  

While The Thread is actually comparable with The Island it is the subject matter which forces me to apply a different measure on it, and therefore find it so woeful.

On the side of the Crow by Christien Gholson

This collection of “prose poems” is unsettling. (Prose poem is a description that makes me cringe a bit – perhaps calling them single page short stories might be better). 

They are stand alone pieces and yet gradually you pick up on the same names being mentioned – there is a thread that runs between them, but what exactly that thread is never comes completely into focus.  They are both gritty and surreal, are they of the past or of the future? you can’t pin them down, but there is a deep sense of the “real” about them.  They force the reader’s own imagination into work as you try to make sense of the world that is being sketched before you – and that is the real strength of the collection, they demand your input and so you are drawn in.

Vision and Values in Primary Education Edited by Kathleen Taylor and Richard Woolley

It was an unusual experience reading this book, the collected word of a number of authors, because for once I knew most of them - from the time I spend in the midst of Bishop Grosseteste University (nee College).  Not all of them are still at BG, but that would have been the place where most of the paths crossed that led to the creation of this book. I could hear they individual voices speaking through the text.

While I knew them at BG, mostly what I shared with the authors was the usual grumbles over coffee that will be heard in any staffroom and so it was really good to encounter them here with their profession hats on.  But I think it was also good to have that other insight and as such to ground what is often an idealistic book - that these ideals are not the product of super-humans but ordinary mortals acts to empowered the writing rather than detracting from it (and I think that they would be please to have that insight shared – these are, if we believe what they have written, educators who would see no value in maintaining a mystique around their presence).  

Among the chapters some were more directly practical; and perhaps I personally took less from those, but I am not a Primary School Teacher and therefore not really the target audience and so that is no criticism of the book.  It was instead with the more “philosophical” chapters that I personally found the greatest connection.  In part this was me reading as a School Governor, for whom the key question is mostly “What?” rather than “How?” a school should deliver.  But I think I was equally making connections as a “general reader” – so much of where is at steak here is about the kind of society you wish to live in not just the running of a primary classroom, and as such you don’t have to be an educationalist in order to take an interest.

I was recently at Local Authority session for School Governors where an HMI was forcefully asserting that Ofsted has no agenda on the “How” of what you do in school, as long as it works.  The difficultly comes in the definition of “works” – which for Ofsted has to be framed in the measurable standards as captured in SATs and other formalized assessment measures. What the HMI was sort of saying was the best education will result in high standards in SATs etc as an incidental result rather than as its sole focus.  If you take him at his word (and I am not sure how much Ofsted’s working practices bear witness to this belief…) Ofsted is entirely in tune with the message of this book – an idea which might both horrify and delight (and perhaps also mystify) its authors!

There are some fundamental skills which Primary Education needs to impart, such as moving children from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”, but actually a greater part of the curriculum should be there to inspire the life long desire and the habit of learning, rather than thinking it has delivered a package of knowledge (armed with which the child can go away and get on with life).  

I accept that my own Primary Education is from an era when facts were out of fashion, the National Curriculum arrived in my final years at Whitings Hill, but as far as I can tell it was yet to have any real impact in our classrooms by the time we left – and Literacy Hours were not yet even a twinkle in a Secretary of State’s eye.  I encountered SATs only at the end of year 9, and, having opted out of school for most of the preceding term, I ended up doing an English SAT on Romeo and Juliet without actually having read any of the play (it was not a complete disaster and for better or worse I have gone on to often deploy similar tactics in the rest of my educational career…).  As such I am naturally drawn to the “softer” side of education and away from “hard” facts (I got through my History A-Level without learning a single date – but without “flying colours” either…).

As the report “Every Child Matters” has now been superseded we are once again freed to say that we believe that every child matters without it being part of an “Agenda” or a hallow cliques.  Running throughout the book it an approach in which the starting point should be a delight in every child, the belief that they not only matter but are amazing.  This in not to say that they always (or in some cases even often) make that an easy thing to remember, but it is true. 

I am not sure how much the coming together of the authors at BG as an institution with a Christian identity will have impacted their thought, or how many of them personally own a Christian identity, but the valuing of the potential and the inherent gifts of each individual is surely an expression Christianity at its best. There is much that the Church could learn, healthy Churches will be learning communities built on individuals exploring their potential, not on rout learnt catechisms or buzzing with this week’s proof text.  

The following quote really spoke to me “Education should seek to produce learners that are curious, creative, imaginative, motivated, enthusiastic, and prepared to take ricks. It should develop aspirational, self-assured, flexible, and resilient human beings who not only can answer questions independently, but seek to raise their own questions and hypotheses as well.  It should be liberating and empowering … [It] should allow children to not only produce products, but also to luxuriate in and dwell on the process of the learning journey.”  You only have to substitute a couple of words to shift it from the context of school to church.