Waterfalls of Stars, My Ten Years on the Island of Skomer by Rosanne Alexander

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I found this book via a review in Planet Magazine, but I will be honest when it arrived at 350 pages of pretty small print I think I let out a sigh – was there really that much to say about 10 years spent on a tiny island? I share this because while I picked it up fairly reluctantly, having picked it up I found that I couldn’t put it down.

Rosanne’s arrival on the island is a bit of a scramble, including a shot gun wedding, and one is worried that this will turn out to be an epic of regret and frustration. But once on the island Rosanne rapidly falls in love with it.

She provides an account, a generally positive account, of isolation that is almost impossible today. They have no electricity, no phone, only brief radio communication via the Coastguard. Later wardens of Skomer now have electricity, connectivity. Does “keeping in touch” lessen or underscore the separation, possible loneliness – and does it provide a distraction from the deep connection with the island and its wildlife that was so central to the joy Rosanne found on the island.

There is a poetic quality to the descriptions of the island, the sea, the various animals, and the emotional responses Rosanne has to it all. She has real skill as a writer, the subject matter is rich but she draws you into its very heart.

She also has the lightness of touch to play on the humour of many situations, for example almost all the anecdotes involving Wellington the goat.

But throughout the account there are moments that will make you weep, such as the oil spills impact on the seals and sea birds, gut wrenching in the shared sense of helplessness, hopelessness. Or their recovery of the body of a drowned fisherman.

Alongside these are more intimate, but not less powerful, moments – when they have to re-home “The Raven”, an injured bird they had hoped to nurse back to health and a return to the wild, but it was not to be.

As they prepare his departure “He was extraordinarily quiet and well behaved as he was transferred to the small cage. Perhaps subdued would have been a better word. He was such an intelligent bird that I couldn’t help wondering how much he understood of what was happening.” and then “’Hello’ he said quietly, for the last time.” Hello was the only word The Raven had learned, that the moment of separation is marked with this incongruous word broke me. It probably doesn’t make sense quoted like this but in the flow of the account you are riding the ebb and flow of emotion with Rosanne.

And ultimately we come to their departure from Skomer, in a mirror to her arrival, it is forces beyond her control that determine the timing – she has time to say goodbye, but no choice over the need to say goodbye.

You are left with the sense of not having read about life on Skomer but having lived it. I don’t think there is high praise to give to a writer.

Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum Ed. A Flecter, D Antoine, & JD Hill

Out of print but can be found on Amazon 

As “Research Publication” this is aimed at a scholarly / professional audience rather than the general reader.

The preface sates that “The motivation for publishing this book is to emphasize that for a museum of any size, it is important to separate out issues of repatriation or display from those of conservation, documentation and research in relation to human remains.”

The various chapters give a good coverage of “what to do” in terms of professional practice but I guess I was expecting a stronger engagement in the “why”.

This is touched only a little in Jody Joy’s chapter on bog bodies in the exploration of the difference between them and skeletons – but while there might be an instinctive emotional response to a body that is distinct to bones alone whether this should be carried over to an actual difference is treatment could have been explored more fully.

In the same chapter it is noted that surveys show that the overwhelming majority of visitors to the British Museum expect, and want, to see human remains on display. But how to display various types of human remains in ways the encourage a respectful encourage with them is a key challenge (perhaps even more so in the age of the selfie – is it ok to take a selfie with a skeleton, mummy, a bog body?).

For some of the more recent remains, especially those collected with colonial contexts, there is likely to be cultural continuity between the individuals whose remains the Museum holds and living communities and there is some exploration about how the values and wishes of those communities are incorporated into the way the remains are stored, displayed, and studied, including in some cases the decisions to “repatriate” the remains to communities. But beyond these examples there seemed to be little or no engagement with how the beliefs and values of the individuals whose remains the Museum holds might impact its practice, and the older the remains are the less of a factor this seems to become. There are some generalised notions of “respect”, of not objectifying the remains (but I am not sure how successful that is in reality), but are these enough?

Given the immense scientific and cultural value the study of human remains holds, it is absolutely right that Museum and other institutions have and make use of them, and this book is a welcome insight into the engagement with the challenges that bring, and maybe some of the philosophical questions I have pointed to above are outside its brief but I think they need to be wrestled with.

Vision upon Vision by George Guiver

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The blurb on the back refers to this as a “magisterial book” - and I guess it is, the trouble is that also means that for those with anything more that a passing interest in liturgy and worship the ground it covers is pretty familiar. I found myself often going “yes, exactly” and very rarely, if at all, “I never thought of that”.

In the consideration of the changes in worship that went along side the Reformation and the Enlightenment Guiver regrets the general reduction of the liturgy to the words alone. The lost of the involvement of the whole body. Even today we see this, but it can be overlooked by worship leaders as the clergy (and servers) are at the heart of action – meanwhile the laity are sat looking on from a distance resulting in “much of the detail can be lost to them, there is much less immediacy, and the experience easily becomes simply boring. Even what little corporality survives today in now coming under assault of laziness – the people catch it from the clergy. Often a congregation simply sit through most of the service. That kind of sitting shows a lack of confidence in taking active part – it expresses sitting back, non-involvement of the body…”

This is a theme I have reflected on before and entirely agree with.

Guiver also, to my mind, correctly notes that “Creative worship often runs into problems... The paradoxical result is limited creativity or a lack of edge… we are then left with a repetitive falling-back on common gambits – candles, stones, projecting pictures” and, I would add writing our sins on post-it notes – something I have been refusing to do for the best part of a decade .

Thinking about the faith that worship is responding to, Guiver provides the neat quote that “Anything that can be reduced to static formulas and a fixed system was not true tradition but a caricature of it”

While I also liked his phrase that “The faith once delivered to the saints and preserved in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, is called to go forward balanced forever wobblingly on the narrow line of trust.”

So now at Church I quietly amend the Creed, so it begins “We believe, wobblingly, in one God, the Father, the Almighty...”

And on the importance of worship – he suggests that if there is any point at all (and for many that is a big “if”) then it is of the highest importance – as he puts it “If we need motivation for throwing all our efforts into creating a vibrant, dedicated and praying Church, we need only keep society’s problems before our eyes. For society to change, it needs a vibrant and thriving Church in its midst”

While, he also notes that “If worship is in these ways to be compared with art, then as in the arts nothing but the best will do. It might seem obvious to say that worship should always be of the best, but we have habits, which we even sometimes justify, of offering less.”

The points that he makes might not be particularly original – but he does make them well.

You’re Welcome to Ulster by Menna Gallie

Out of print but can be found on Amazon 

Reading this almost 50 years after it publication this novel writing of, then, contemporary events is so soaked in its time that it now for us, in effect, historical fiction. And reading it, there is a sorrow knowing how long the road to peace would be, and perhaps even now how fragile that peace remains.

While there are strong political themes within the novel, which I will explore, its success comes from the quality of the story telling – characters with authenticity engage you in the drama.

Written at the beginning of the so called “Troubles” it explores the ways that individual identities are shaped and informed by the community of identity around them. In Northern Ireland a sharp division placing you on one side or the other.

But there are also gender identities at play – Sarah on learning of a potentially terminal illness has come to Northern Ireland to revisit her friends but more importantly a lover – even if she survives her breast cancer she feels the treatment will take away something of her womanhood and so she needs to connect and be affirmed sexually.

And the young men being sucked into the conflict – it is as much a defence of their manhood as it is any social or political cause they are fighting for.

To bring Sarah from Wales into this provides the useful device of an outsider to whom things need to be explained – but there is also a significance to her coming from Wales, a nation marginalised in the British project of identity building. The struggle for cultural and political identity might have common features from place to place, but it is also fundamentally distinct.

And what is Sarah’s relationship with Welsh Nationalism? in a word reluctant.

At one point she reflects that:

“We don’t have the makings of tyrants here; our enemies are so piddling, a waste of reformist energy which ought to be better applied; Welsh nationalism, for example, seems to me to be about letting English cities use our water supplies and about having telephone instructions in Welsh. ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.’ Patriots and tyrants, Caroline, not motorcar-licence application forms in Welsh and adolescents wanting to run the universities. No, we don’t have the makings here in Britain, thank God.”

And at another point “She cringed to think of a possible repetition of similar horrors in Wales, sprouting from an unholy alliance between the implacable and the inept.”

It put me in mind of Ned Thomas’ The Welsh Extremist. (Which I read while at University, having stumbled across it in the basement of the University library and being the first person to take it out the library is the best part of 2 decades. I have ordered a copy online to re-read it). Ned Thomas is also thankful that violence has never really been part of the modern Welsh story but it raises a question about why the Welsh, generally, are not politically impassioned by their identity.

This is an ongoing question, see in the relative standing of the SNP and Plaid Cymru – but that also point to a large part of the answer – the Welsh Language as a point of division between Welsh people, so Plaid seen as the Party of the Language is not trusted by many English speakers within Wales.

Sarah meets a Welsh Nationalist who is on the run after planting a bomb, which it turns out never went off. I am not sure how deliberate a metaphor for the wider Welsh Nationalist project this bomb that fails to go off is meant to be – but intentional or not, it can be seen as one.

Sarah chides this boy Nationalist - “...I do so believe that nationalism is fundamentally selfish. It’s greedy. It cares about us, the in-group. Why are you in the wrong fight, boy? Just imagine being black or Vietnamese for a change, unless the burden is too great for you. Don’t you think Welsh Nationalism is a luxury when there are bigger battles to be fought”

Which perhaps brings us to Michael Sheen’s Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbVdA7zS8dE it is a powerful exploration of, among other things, the deep seated lack of self-belief within Wales, with the internalising of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry for Wales - “for Wales see England” - there is a lack of fight because so many believe they have nothing distinctive to fight for.

There are places where suffering and inequality are stripping people of life itself and not just identity, and compared to those it is easy to characterise Welsh Nationalism as a luxury – but it doesn’t need to be a zone sum game – there may be bigger battles to be fought, but that does not prevent the smaller battles being fought as well.

Creating a society that respects peoples self-identity, a state that allows people to communicate with it on their own terms rather than only its terms – these are not principles that should not be narrowly applied but ones that create openness.

The Long Dry by Cynan Jones

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Having read Cynan Jones’ powerfully brilliant Cove last year I have brought his other works.

The Long Dry was his first novel, and the same lightness of touch is present here as in the Cove, an economy of writing – in just 100 pages he creates a world complete in itself – with all the intensity of human emotions and human relationships in the context of the struggles of ordinary life.

The narrative voice switches between husband and wife – balancing them skilfully and pointing to how much goes unsaid between them – and occasionally it even finds it way to be the voice of the Cow – which adds a softness, not quiet humour, as moment of relief from what is at times a fairly bleak tale.

The relationship with “the land” - the extent of rootedness in it is a key theme – a tough relationship on a small farm – but compared with the rootlessness that so many now feel an attractive bondage perhaps?

A Child is Born by Abby Guinness

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This is a 31 day set of reflections for “Advent” - although some might want to characterise it as extended reflections on the Christmas – as for example Gabriel announces Jesus’ birth to the Shepherds on day15, while Anna and Simeon “Candlemas” encounter with Jesus is dealt with on days 26 and 27. As it happened I was somewhat behind schedule with this particular Advent book, and therefore these days tied in well to the liturgical calendar.

What I liked about this book was that as part of the reflection, on most days, after the Bible reading you had “From Joseph’s perspective” or “From Gabriel’s perspective” and so on – an imaginative piece about what that particular character was thinking or feeling about the familiar events of the reading. This was a good way of bringing you afresh to some of these passages that we know so well we risk failing to engage with them.

Hide by Matthew Griffin

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This book didn't just make me cry, it made me wretch with pain at the honest love.

There are many books written about people falling in love, but books that explore the endurance of love are rare.

Much of the power of the book comes from that fact that Wendell and Frank in mid-century mid-west USA could not live openly as a same-sex couple. There is a claustrophobic nature of their relationship from the start as a result – outside of their home they live separate lives, at home there is only the two of them.

And this kind of works for them.

But the heat of the book comes from the account of their old age, of Frank's mind and body failing and Wendell becoming care-giver. And in this sense I think their genders are not so important – we can all call to mind couples whose lives have been compressed – even when their relationship had been outward facing, their home open doored – not just age, but the need of one to care for the other has closed them down.

It is unflinching in recounting the ways in which the body, and mind, can abandon us – and, told through Wendell's voice, the need to clear up afterwards.

For better for worse, in sickness and in health – vows Frank and Wendell never got the chance to make, but vows they lived as truly as anyone.

There is a third character, Daisy the dog, who Wendell buys as an attempt to bring Frank out of himself. It works, but is also a source of pain – that Frank can show love to Daisy only highlights his inability to articulate his love for Wendell.

And the “resolution” of Daisy's story – I was reading it on the train back from London, I had tears rolling down my face, and I had to put the book down, and then force myself to pick it up and read on – and then put it down, and then read on. The unstoppablity, the horror, even recalling it now is hard.

In some ways Frank becomes a horrible person, in some ways a complete innocence – stripped of all dignity yet proud and stubborn.

It is a lesson in what love really looks like – happy ever after can be a long hard slog – when you find yourself the care-taker of the body that was the person who is the love of your life. [I know the tenses in that sentence are awkward]  When you are tired, exhausted, but you go on because you will go to the end of the earth for them – but while going on in that moment all you feel is rage.

I read a copy from the library, but I have now ordered a copy – something I never do – but it has such power that I want to have it, to have the chance to re-read it. Until Our Blood is Dry by Kit Habianic is probably one of the few books that has had the same kind of emotional punch for me – I remain unsettled by it. I read a lot and most books go in one ear and one the other (sic), my reason for having this blog is to externalise my memory – but I don't think I will need a blog to recall this story...