Friends and Enemies by Richard Woolley

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This is the third novel by Richard Woolley and once again he has delivered a captivating read.

Since reading the last one I have found out that while they were all published together they were written over a period of years, and by chance I have read them in the order of their creation.

This time the canvass seemed bigger, we take in a story arc which ranges from the eve of the Second World War to the present and action on both sides of the Berlin War at the height of the Cold War.

As with the other works this is at its core a search for identity but sex and sexuality are perhaps less central to that search this time round. That is not to say that sex is absent, and our central character Jon probably learns more about his Mother's sexual past than most sons would wish to.

In taking on Nazis, Communists, and Capitalists there is significant risk that the novel would simply become glib. However this is avoided because the characters we encounter are not simply card board cut outs – the SS Officer is an unsympathetic character, but not simply or specifically because he is an SS Officer.

That said, it is still a political novel and therefore your appreciation of it might well vary depending on your politics – and I would probably have to admit that my own enjoyment of it might well be due an alignment between the novel and my own world views. It is anti-system, irrespective of the system, it privileges personal integrity over political “truths” or ideology, left-lending but too libertarian to subscribe to most of the “solutions” offered by “the Left”.

The earlier two novels used diaries as a device to deliver part of the narrative. Here that role is taken by the finding of the Mother's novel-style account of the events of her early life. This is a slightly awkward device in the sense that her writing of a “novelization” of her life and its discovery in far flung fragments decades later is somewhat contrived. The discovery of a diary might have been a more straight forward mechanism for the son, Jon, and the reader to learn what had gone before.

As I reflected on the first novel “Back in 1984” again I found that the final chapter or two tidies too many loose ends – I think Woolley would have created a more authentic narrative if Jon, and us, were left with some doubts and questions

Rainbow in my eyes by J.K. Rowbory

This is a really great collection, full of pithy and thought-provoking images. A lot of the poems have more or less explicit “Christian” content, but they are about an authentic engagement with God not sentimental piety. There is a lot of pain and anger expressed – the healthy kind of rage against God that we often find within the psalms. There is also great tenderness too – as the last of the 4 poems I have shared shows – in it there is the subtlety of a twist in expectations of who the speaker is. And there is also humour - it is a rare and very skilful mix of moods and emotions.

Heartcry

Surely the very fabric of the universe

must be bending, must be vibrating.

Surely my pain must be felt

in the house down the street,

down the town,

down the country.

Violent shockwaves pulse out from my epicentre,

such is the intensity of my grief.

Surely something must happen,

surely there must be a response to my agony.

But my room stares back at me in silence.

Invisibly, silently,

God's arms wrap around me so closely

that the sobs that wrack my body

convulse him too.

Can't you be a magician, God?

Can't you be a magician, God,

if only for one day?

Forget about being wise and good

and do exactly what I say.

Can't out prayers be spells, God,

if only for one day?

The right words in the right order

and bingo! We'll have our way.

Make me better now, Lord.

Please no more delay.

I want to force your hand, Lord,

to make my illness go away.

He is not here

I want to go in and

smash the stained-glass windows,

chip the altar in two,

squeeze spurts of tomato ketchup

onto the walls and

stamp jam into the carpets.

I want to go in and

get some chainsaw action going

on the hard cold pews and

flamethrow the hanging banners,

chuck several cans of bright pink paint

over the heavy oak doors,

yank the clangers from their bells,

rip up the children's pictures

on the Sunday School display and

hurl after-service mugs and teacups

to shatter against the font.

He is not here.

We are his home now,

not bricks and mortar.

The rampage of Jesus' death

tore the separating curtain apart.

Christmas

You are my treasure,

my pearl beyond price.

I forsake all my riches,

my wealth in heaven,

to come and seek you out.

Song of the Butcher Bird by Gladys Mary Coles

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Much of this collection finds it theme in one or other of the World Wars, although, as the two poems I have shared below show, it is often not in a direct way that the conflicts is addressed. There is a gentleness in the way that Gladys confronts you with big emotions and challenging ideas which gives the collection a special potency.

The Stonemason

'My name is Legion: for we are many' Mark V.9

He's sure of each new name he carves in marble,

Precision in his chipping out by chisel -

Each hammer tap exact to sculpt a letter.

He's not employed to grieve or show he's bitter

But merely etch the names and regiments,

The years and very finest sentiments.

He has to keep a steady hand and nerve,

Try not to picture faces, young, naïve,

Clear-eyed, smooth-skinned beneath their caps and badges,

Consigned to death's red mouth, hell's hostages.

He mustn't think of flesh of the distress

Of mothers, wives, or children's life-long loss.

He's now at work in every town and region

Inscribing names in stone. These names are legion.

War Story

Afternoon heat invading the factory, she felt trapped

in her turban, tied to the insatiable machine

feeding it identical parts at identical intervals.

Sun hazed the dungeon air, as in St Xavier's Church

with its soporific sermons she'd ceased to attend.

He would be writing from Ceylon, he'd promised.

Perhaps the letter was waiting at home

on thin foreign paper smelling of lemons.

Her mother would have propped it by the mirror

she always looked in, hating her turban-flattened hair,

the squashed sausage of curls. Yes, the letter

would be there. And she would read it, over

and over, like the novels of Pearl S. Buck.

The machine churned on, cogs clicking, clacking

munitions' rough music. The afternoon shift

was dull since he'd gone. The canteen... there

she'd seen him first... tall, smoking a Senior Service.

He'd smiled, suggested the pictures.

Linking he'd explained, 'I'm A1, but exempt

as an engineer. Enjoy swimming... sometimes cycle to Wales'.

The machine seized the rifle butts in eager jaws -

she wiped the sweat sliding down her arms.

Gone three months now. The ring he gave her, twined

and with a pearl, promised all... 'I'll write.

Won't be long to wait. Hitler's almost done for.'

Her screams rose above the roar

as the machine consumed her sleeve, pulling her arm

into its rotating teeth. Fastened by flesh, she fell

when the Foreman pressed the pedal of release.

'First Aid!' 'Ring for an ambulance!'

She heard their voices from a far-off reef

like wavelet around the island of Ceylon.

The pain held all her body by the arm.

'Perhaps she'd heard – it's going round -

about her Bill. Married to a women back in Wales.

We kept it from her as he'd gone to Ceylon,

but news files...'

A bomb burst in her brain. Somewhere a plane

exploded in the sun.

Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England by Helen Gittos

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Interested in the dynamics between liturgy and the spaces of its enactment I was drawn to this when it was reviewed in the Church Times, however, sadly, it did not live up to my expectations.

The first chapter “Creating sacred places in the landscape” was engaging and its drawing out of themes that we more readily see in so called “Celtic” contexts was particularly interesting. The period in question was key to the development of the landscape and settlement in England, a time when the majority of our towns and villages took on many of the essential characteristics which still define them today. As such an understanding of the role of the “sacred” within that is definitely valuable.

However for the remainder, while there was an interest in the descriptive material, and I certainly am better informed about pre-Conquest Churches than I was before, there was a feeling of something missing. This missing aspect was the interpretive layer.

Gittos seemed to be unwilling to offer explanations for the phenomena that she was recounting. I am not sure if this was “good scholarship” in the sense of her not offering un-evidenced theories or whether it was simply a lack of imagination. With a £60+ price tag this perhaps it is assumed that the readership would be in a position to draw their own conclusions as it is certainly priced beyond the reach of the “general” reader.

Sad Giraffe Café by Richard Gwyn

This is a collection of micro stories (I am once again trying to avoid the term “prose poem”...) some of which are completely stand alone while others share themes and characters. There is a surrealism to many – but also a charm and an engaging feel – a level are which they are either nonsense verse or profound satire, maybe they can be both? .

Here is one example...

[I have kept the line breaks is in the book, the text was also justified but I haven't worked out how to do that on here...]

SPY

There was a knock at the door. I got up and an-

swered. A man stood on the porch, wearing a grey

trilby. I asked what he wanted. He said he was a spy

and wanted to monitor my activities. I said if he was

a spy he would not tell me he was a spy. He said such

an attitude was simplistic, that it was a case of calling

my bluff. I conceded that what he said may be so,

but listen, I said, Mister Spy, I have nothing to re-

veal, nothing to conceal, and am of no interest to

The State; I have no politics and no opinions on any-

thing whatever. He said that in itself was of interest,

if true. I said listen, I have things to do, I am a busy

man. What things? He said, you forget, I am a spy, I

need to know. He gestured at the trilby, meaning, I

suppose, that it represented something I would never

grasp or fathom. I have things to write, I said, typing

on an imaginary keyboard, as if he were an imbecile,

then added foolishly volunteering information:

though I have nothing to say. So then, you ad-

mit it, said the spy, with a note of triumph. If it weren't

for me, coming to your house like this, you'd have

nothing to say at all.

Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh

I read this book as a spin off from reading The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane, while MacFarlane walks in many locations Shehadeh's account is about walking in the “same” landscape over time – across times of great change.

This is a strongly political account because Shehadeh is a Palestinian walking in the West Bank, land occupied by Israel since 1967, and about which all discourse is politically charged.

Before the foundation of the State of Israel there was already a tension between the Palestinian experience of the land and the various colonizers narratives about it. The life of the Palestinians was often negated by these narratives about the land as a barren wilderness. At one level the Israel settlement of the West Bank is an extension of that colonial narrative of development of the wilderness (which has marginalised native populations across the global).

The Jewish identification with the land of the Biblical Israel, especially as articulated by Zionists, adds additional layers of complexity, of passion, and of pain to that standard dynamic.

One of the most depressing aspects of the book is Shehadeh's assessment of the Oslo Accords, which many of us took as the only real opportunity for peace there has been, and yet he felt they were a betrayal of the grass roots Palestinians and a guarantor of continuing violence. Sadly his assessment increasingly seems to have been accurate.

It is clear that there is mutual dehumanizing of the Palestinian and Israeli populations. The current separation, which is only going to be further entrenched by construction of the Israeli wall, allows both sides to ignore the humanity of the other and while that continues there is little chance of peace. Hope of a kind, albeit still very small, comes in the penultimate comes when Shedadeh encounters an Isreali Settler on one of his walks, it is a humanizing encounter for them both. (For while Shedadeh is a good man up until this point he had viewer the Settlers as a category rather than as people).

Once you acknowledge the humanity of the actors on both sides of a conflict simplistic divisions between the “good” and the “bad” have to be refused – but while resolution then appears more complex it is only be addressing that true complexity that meaningful and lasting resolutions are possible at all.

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

NB – Contains Spoilers

This is the third part of C. S. Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy but, after trips to Mars and Venus, this time we remain earth bound.

Published in 1945 this feels somewhat more political than the two pre-war parts and there is a definite Orwellian overtone to the N.I.C.E.

I found the antics of the N.I.C.E. (the Nation Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments rather than the latter day National Institute for Clinical Excellence) more engaging that the mysticism centred around the space travelling Ransom.

This was especially the case for N.I.C.E.'s Deputy Director, Wither, with his unfailing ability to speak without ever saying anything. He must have been a hero to Sir Humphrey and possibly civil servants everywhere. Wither takes “plausible deniable” (the holy grail for a successful political career) and elevates it to an art form.

That the University Don C. S. Lewis casts a “technocratic” Institute as the instrument of evil is revealing if not terribly surprising. During the first couple decades after the World War Two Britain embraced the technocrat in a way it had never done before, and mostly has not since. It was an era of great “Plans”, epitomised by the New Towns, and so it is interesting that at one level “That Hideous Strength” is a pre-emptive back-lash.

The allegorical quality of this novel is less evident than in the previous part, Perelandra, but the Christianity of those drawn around Ransom, even of Merlin, is firmly stated. The demise of the N.I.C.E. in a blood bath it perhaps an honest outcome but if you were hopeful of redemption... that seems lacking.

The couple at the centre of the novel, Mark and Jane, are neither of them particularly likeable. I guess one should be drawn to Jane as she is at least on the right side of the conflict, but really I found her pathetic and insipid. In one respect this is a token of the quality of the storytelling, it remains engaging whilst being devoid of any truly sympathetic characters.

To the extent that it is Orwellian it is to me a pessimistic vision. The power of N.I.C.E. is only broken by supernatural intervention and the novel clearly states that humanity, left on its own, would have succumb. Of course N.I.C.E. had its own supernatural backers too, so if you concede that supernatural “good” is needed to counter supernatural “evil”, perhaps you can hold on to the hope that ordinary human goodness has the power to overcome ordinary human evil.