BOOK REVIEWS

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson - 1938.
I read this while on holiday in Scotland, immediately upon finishing The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  At first glance it appeared - and is, in style and feeling - incredibly different from that book, but there is a similarity.  Both heroines are, superficially, rather drab and unassuming: but both have dreams and ultimately their true character is revealed.

Miss Pettigrew is also interesting as a portrait of its time: some of the behaviour in the book would, at that point, have appeared somewhat shocking whereas nowadays it's something we accept as perfectly normal.

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg - 1992/1994
It must be about the fourth or fifth time I have read this book, and I opened it in excited anticipation.  I was slightly disappointed this time: I think the philosophical musings were more poignant and relevant when I was young, free, single and not very happy nor sure of myself (I probably related to the heroine better).  In addition I found some of it a little pretentious and whilst it is meant to be a thriller and 'whodunnit', also far-fetched.

However there are plenty of quotable passages which I had previously underlined and many of which still hold a resonance for me:
"I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church.  It's the light of grace for me.  Never do I close my door without being conscious that I am carrying out an act of charity towards myself."

"Reading snow is like listening to music.  To describe what you've read is to try to explain music in writing."

"Falling in love has been greatly overrated.  Falling in love consists of forty-five per cent fear of not being accepted and forty-five per cent manic hope that this time the fear will be put to shame, and a modest ten per cent frail awareness of the possibility of love."

"I grew up in a community.   If I've desired and sought out brief periods of solitude and introspection, it has always been in order to return to the social group as a stronger person".

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - 1989
I've included this only because I just couldn't get on with it.  I appreciate that the Butler-Narrator is meant to be typical of his type, class and sex but I just found him arrogant, unsympathetic and completely lacking in any sense of emotional intelligence or self-awareness.  That is of course deliberately how the author wants him to come across, but he annoyed me so much I couldn't even continue reading the book to see whether he changed!  So one of the very few on my list of 'failures'.