It's Friday! Let's talk literary lovers.

It's a beautiful day here on the Isle of Wight, and I've spent the last two days in the garden with my nose in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, being lucky enough to have a four-day weekend this week. (Hurrah!)

Despite my crazy to-read list (which I swear has a life of its own and is possibly breeding without my help) I've been back in the bookshops again - quite aside from when I've been working! - and invested in four new YA books: Paranormalcy, Ballad, Amy and Roger's Epic Detour and What I Saw And How I Lied. I've made a start on Amy and Roger, but I'll give these books more attention when I've finished the Potter series.

At GReads, Ginger asked:

Mr and Mrs: Who are your favourite book couples?

Firstly, I have a confession to make: I'm not a big fan of the mushy stuff. (Shocking, I know!) For the most part, romance in books is a thing to be tolerated as long as it doesn't get in the way of the plot. So I don't tend to get excited about most couples. A lot of books are full of lovable, funny, lively or sweet characters who pair up and make each other happy. But for me, it takes more than that for me to think of them as "a couple" rather than "two characters who fall in love with each other." There has to be a special dynamic between the characters, people who complement each other. Their relationship is almost like a third character itself, where together they are stronger than each person apart. Which is not to say that either character is nothing without the other! If you've got two non-characters, then you get a non-relationship.

I think it's quite rare to find that kind of special relationship in modern teen fiction, probably because there is such a prevalence of love triangles. As I once tried to explain to a former Creepy Stalker trying to ask my advice on which of two girls he ought to ask out: if there's any question about it, if it's not obvious, then surely neither one is right to be with right now. That's my take on it, anyway.

So, who are those literary lovers whose relationship is so strong it softens even my hard heart? 

Exhibit A: Anne Shirley and Gilbert Bythe, from the Anne of Green Gables series. They meet when Anne is eleven years old, and Gilbert makes a very poor first impression when he makes fun of her red hair, causing her to smash her slate over his head. Anne doesn't speak to Gilbert for years after this insult. Yet he's always present in her mind, as an enemy and a rival in school, even though she might protest her indifference to him. They become friends eventually, however, and it's quite clear that Gilbert thinks Anne is something special. But to Anne, Gilbert is just a very dear friend - or so she thinks. But he will keep appearing in her thoughts and getting in the way when she's trying to daydream!

[Anne's "home o'dreams"] was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity.

Bless her, she's in love and she doesn't even realise it! The great thing about the Anne series is that it doesn't just end with the happily-ever-after of a typical "romance," but shows them through their engagement living apart, married life and onto their own children, their love staying strong through good and bad times, and even when they might not necessarily be feeling "in love."

Exhibit B is drawn from the Bard himself: Benedick and Beatrice, the original love/hate relationship from Much Ado About Nothing. Both swear that they will never marry, show disdain for the opposite sex and put all their energy into trying to score points off the other - but they are so perfectly suited. No one else can match them in wit, and I have the impression that their surface antagonism hides a real enjoyment from their banter and wordplay with each other. It doesn't take a lot, really, for them to be persuaded into love with each other. To quote C. S. Lewis: "They were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently." Here's their first scene together, as portrayed by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.



Runners-up:


Arthur and Molly Weasley - Harry Potter series. Ron's parents have been married for over twenty years and brought up seven children, and it is quite clear that Molly wears the trousers in the family. An angry Mrs Weasley is not a sight anyone likes to see up close, and Mr Weasley appears to be a typical hen-pecked husband, but the couple have a real love for each other which shines through, even when Mrs Weasley is shouting at her husband again for meddling with the muggle technology that he is so fond of. 


Sam and Sybil Vimes - Discworld novels. When we first meet Sam Vimes, Captain of the City Watch, he is an angry, cynical drunk who is going nowhere. Lady Sybil Ramkin - is a jolly-hockey-sticks type of noblewoman who dresses in her scruffiest clothes and looks after sick dragons. She is a sensible, motherly woman who is able to stand up for herself and her loved ones, maybe a toned-down version of Molly Weasley. It's clear that Sam and Sybil need each other. Vimes is too forceful a character to allow himself to be wrapped around his wife's finger, but she can firmly but gently persuade him to do things he doesn't want to, when no one else can. It is Sybil, and Vimes' love for her that saves him from the darkness inside himself.

Finally - a late addition to my favourite couples list - Faramir and Eowyn - Lord of the Rings. We don't get to see much of them together; in fact they don't even meet until near the end of the book. Eowyn is always described as a cold, strong, beautiful woman; she's full of love for her country, Rohan, as much courage and skill on the battlefield as her brother, but always she is forbidden from proving her worth because she is a woman. She is in love with warrior king Aragorn - or in love with the idea of him - and full of despair for the future. Then she meets Faramir, who does not view her with condescension, but respect and admiration for a remarkable woman. He offers her hope, and when she allows herself to fall in love with him, she is able to let down her guard without worrying about looking weak. Both know what it is to carry all of the burdens of their family and none of the glory - Faramir, though a respected soldier and wise, clever man, was always overshadowed by his elder brother Boromir. This is a marriage of equals, and the scene in which they realise their love for each other has always made me go a little bit swoony inside.

What Katie Did: a general update

What Katie Read: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

See, there's this boy, right.
Called Skippy. He dies.

This crazy, sprawling epic is set in and around a prestigious old boys' school and follows staff, students and other local characters in the events leading up to and following the death of Daniel "Skippy" Juster. Seemingly unconnected characters all had their own stories to tell, and gradually all came to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. Murray uses a mixture of unusual narrative techniques: alongside the ordinary third-person narration are chapters written in the second person - "you" - the first book I've read to use this, and stream-of-consciousness. Despite this, Skippy is quite intelligible, although some of the consciousnesses we see into are decidedly disturbing, horrible, twisted places. In the end, though, I couldn't be sure what to make of this book. There was so much going on, and it was so many different things: blackly comic, bleak, tragic, innocent and at the same time as obscene as only fourteen-year-old boys can be. Then, after the tragedy, shocking revelations come to light. Not shocking because of being unexpected - given the setting and date of writing, these secrets were almost inevitable - but due to the way they are handled, and because this didn't come from one man's twisted imagination but based upon reality.

I wouldn't recommend Skippy Dies to everyone, as it is horrible in places, and despite its humour in the first part, I reached the end with an impression of disgust and despair. Still, it is an interesting, sometimes amusing, sometimes tragic interesting, well-written and thought-provoking piece of work.

What Katie Watched: Glee and Doctor Who

Once again, I'm late to the party. I tried to avoid the phenomenon of being the last person to discover a new story/band/TV show, but after watching the first two episodes, predicting an adultery storyline and misinterpreting a throwaway line as being much filthier than it actually was, I wasn't too impressed. Then I tried again for season two and got myself hooked, and ended up renting series 1 from Blockbuster to catch up. I've always had a thing about school stories, and the American High School of TV and film seems such a more glamorous, story-worthy place than the bog-standard 13-18 comprehensive I attended. I guess the grass is always greener. Interesting to notice that the American preppie style of fashion seems to be the in thing at the moment. TopShop, H&M, et al are full of High school style sports jackets, short red cheerleading-type skirts and anything out of Rachel Berry's wardrobe, such as polka-dot blouses with cute little rounded collars.

The latest series of Doctor Who opened with a huge two-part story that is comparable to most seasons' finales. Ten minutes in, spmething unthinkable happened, and I was in denial. But due to the laws of timey-wimey and Steven Moffat's magnificant brain, there are still many, many unanswered questions of "what happens next?" and "what happened to lead up to this point?" Unfortunately, it's hard to follow up on such an opener, and stand-alone episodes that would be great in an ordinary season just seem to fall a bit flat, when what you really care about is the big story arc. However, last week's episode, "The Doctor's Wife" was written by Neil Gaiman, and what a cracking story it was! Full of Gaiman's trademark humour and horror, we get a new point of view on the Doctor's life story. I could tell Gaiman was a fan of both old series and new, and although some people complained that the title was "misleading" (which it was) I thought that it was perfect, its meaning perfect and in fact I had predicted the identity of "The Doctor's Wife" as a "mad crazy theory" the day before, after picking up on a clue from the previous episode.

Fangirl much?

What Katie Listened To: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

Just before Spotify changed The Rules to limit how often one can listen to music for free, I had this album pretty much on repeat, so I was thrilled to see Glee dedicating an episode to this album, causing me to buy it for myself. The album tells the real-life story of the band's relationship breakdowns - with each other! - but instead of letting their emotions break up the group, they turned them into some amazing music. Go Your Own Way, Second Hand News and Songbird are my favourites at the moment, but the other tracks follow close behind, and I'm sure they are liable to change.

What Katie Planned:

I've got a much-needed week of holiday from work, in which I intend to spend a lot of my time catching up on my reading. Since my Lent book-buying embargo, I've added some half dozen or so books to my collection as well as a few borrowings from libraries and friends.

Contrary to labelling, Catherine
Tate is the redhead and David
Tennant is the furtive-looking one
with facial hair.



Currently I'm reading The Woodcutter, a crime thriller by Reginald Hill who wrote the Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels. So far, it is remarkably different from the run-of-the-mill mystery I was expecting to read, and is the second book in a row to feature at least some second-person narration - unusual. Hodder books sent me Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth to review, so that will appear online in the next week or two, as will part two of Whitney's Tenant of Wildfell Hall read-along.

On Thursday I'm off to the theatre to watch some Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing starring the wonderful pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Benedick and Beatrice. I absolutely cannot wait.

TV: Blackpool

Another one of those mid-2000s TV series that I missed at the time, probably due to being away at university, Blackpool is a crime drama with a difference. Ripley Holden (David Morrisey) is a thuggish, ambitious amusement arcade owner whose plans to build a Vegas-style casino hotel are jeopardised when a young man is found dead in his arcade. Enter DI Peter Carlisle (David Tennant) who takes an instant dislike to Holden and an equally instant liking to Mrs Holden (Sarah Parish) and watch as Holden's little world starts to unravel. Blackpool is a fairly standard BBC mini-series with a small cast of complex characters and a compulsive mystery, or would be were it not for the musical interludes.

Now, Blackpool isn't strictly a musical series, in the way that, say, Glee is, but the music is more significant than remaining quietly and unobtrusively in the soundtrack like every other show that uses pop music. In Blackpool, dramatic and emotional highlights are translated through Captain Subtext's Truth Helmet* into neatly choreographed song-and-dance routines performed by the characters under the original pop song. Not as slick as if performing original covers, the musical numbers provide some realish surrealism to the drama. The actors' voices provide an extra layer to the music, especially when it is a male singing along with a female-fronted band or vice versa. The cast's voices vary in musical quality (Tennant has a distinctive, husky singing voice while Morrissey's more shouty voice is usually on-key and always in keeping with the character of Ripley Holden) and everyone gives their all. Most memorable is the manly hate tango between Davids Tennant and Morrissey to "These Boots are Made For Walking."

The characterisation is complex, but none of the main characters are exactly lovable - and yet I still found myself caring for them. As the series goes on, Ripley Holden, who starts off as an entirely unsympathetic person, softens and we get to see the heart behind all the bluster and rage. Natalie Holden is the peacemaker of the family, a quiet pillar of the community (she volunteers with the Samaritans) but never really appreciated. When a handsome young detective comes along investigating her husband's part in a murder, it's clear from a mile off where the story will go. The conflict between Natalie doing the right thing, as she has done all her life, or thinking of herself for once starts off well enough, but in the end she comes across as a bit dithery. When all comes to a head, there is too much "I did this for me," or "What about me?" from all sides to really feel any sympathy.

DI Carlisle is a determined man, whether it is to prove that Ripley committed the murder and bring him down, or to get Natalie. When we first meet him, his is the obvious "side" to take because he is Ripley's enemy and Ripley is highly unpleasant. But as Ripley becomes a little more sympathetic, Carlisle's single-mindedness becomes more personal than based on evidence, and he turns to increasingly manipulative and desperate measures to get his nemesis and rival put away.

When it comes to Natalie, he seems to be the antithesis of Ripley. Peter Carlisle is interested in her, wants her to be valued and appreciated as herself, and besides, Ripley has apparently slept with half of the women in Blackpool - that's how much their marriage vows are worth! Carlisle really loves Natalie. And then you remember that he had decided that she was his before they even met, on the strength of a photo. His anger at Natalie when she tells him she can't leave Ripley after all, while perhaps realistic and understandable, shows that maybe his motives aren't so altruistic and noble as we're led to believe. Like Edward Cullen of Twilight, Peter Carlisle is more a creepy stalker who is lucky enough to have his feelings reciprocated, than a romantic forbidden lover. (That being said, in real life - at least in my experience - creepy stalkers don't tend to be David Tennant.)

By the way, take note of how many times Carlisle is shown eating. Especially in the first three or four episodes, he gets through an incredible number of chips, ice creams, doughnuts, etc. etc. Special note goes to the ice cream he sings into during the song, "The Gambler." You know he's unhappy when he refuses a doughnut.

Although the murder mystery is a bit thin and simple, when compared to most crime dramas, there are enough twists and turns, lies and more lies to keep the story going over six one-hour episodes and still keep you hooked. Yet in a way the murder is really a plot point to get the characters into place for the relationships to unfold and unravel. As well as the love triangle of Ripley, Natalie and DI Carlisle, there are family tensions. Ripley's twenty-year-old daughter Shyanne is engaged to a man her father's age, moreover one who knew him in an unhappy past he'd thought he'd put behind him. And seventeen-year-old Danny Holden is a troubled but likable youth with secrets of his own, who is just looking for his father's approval. The answer to the murder mystery itself is not the grand twist ending that many mysteries require, but with only a handful of suspects it's inevitable that the right one would be at least guessed at during the six-hour duration, before being dismissed. But that's okay. That's not what Blackpool is really about. It is more than simply a crime drama or whodunnit. Instead, Blackpool is a character story, a relationship drama. And of course a musical.

*thank you to Steven Moffat's Coupling