Book to TV: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

Dirk Gently is a private detective with a difference: he takes the Quantum hypothesis that all things are interconnected, and applies it to his investigations. I'm probably thinking too deeply about this, but it seemed to be a comment on the rules of fiction. In a novel, there are no coincidences, and everything has a purpose in relation to the main plot. In Dirk Gently, we have a character within a fictional world who is aware of these rules, without actually acknowledging that he's in a novel. This makes for quite a surreal read, even without taking into account the other bizarre plot elements familiar to anyone who has read Douglas Adams' more famous Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books. Adams' matter-of-fact descriptsions -of strange, strange things: a horse apparating in the bathroom, a sofa lodged in an impossible position halfway up the stairs, and a time-travelling Cambridge don, mean that Dirk Genly could conceivably take place in the Hitchhikerverse, if only that hadn't been destroyed at the end of Mostly Harmless.


We don't actually get to meet the titular detective until some way into the first book, and until the sequel, Dirk isn't a viewpoint character. This role is filled in the most part by his old college friend Richard MacDuff, although admittedly Richard shares this position with an alien robot monk, a ghost, and the electric monk's horse (the one that materialised in the bathroom.) Just as in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, much of the sciencey-technobabble goes straight over my head, leaving me somewhat discombobulated. Unlike Hitchhiker's, however, much of it comes back later, by which time it actually makes a little bit of sense. I found myself reminded a little of Doctor Who, which, I later discovered, was with good reason: the time-travelling Cambridge don was recycled from a disused Doctor Who script - written by Adams himself.

Dirk Gently has recently been adapted by the BBC for a three-part TV series, but although they share the same starting point - that is, Dirk Gently, his Holistic Detective Agency and his theory of the fundamental interconnectedness of everything, the stories have very little in common, and have a completely different tone and genre. It came across as a parody of Sherlock Holmes, especially with the modern adaptation Sherlock in the public consciousness, with more emphasis on the actual detecting than in the books, in which Dirk and all around him seem to be accidentally swept up into adventures. Richard MacDuff, here generally known by his surname, is now Gently's partner assistant  sidekick, and they are a team in the grand old tradition of Holmes and Watson, Poirot and Hastings, etc. My overall impression of this Dirk Gently was of a charlatan, a fraud who just makes everything up as he goes along, and through sheer audacity, turns out against all the odds to be right - although I found myself growing more convinced by his methods as the series went along.

Although the adaptations use elements of the books, they are generally only minor plot details with original stories built around them. Rather than being out-and-out science fiction, the BBC stories flip-flop over the genre line from surreal realism into fantasy, notably the episode dealing in robotic engineering. I'm not really qualified to comment on the advances in artificial intelligence, but I haven't yet heard of anything resembling the plot twist in episode 2 in real life!

I read Dirk Gently at the same time that the adaptation was being shown on TV, so have no pre-existing attachment to either version, which is probably for the best considering how different they are. They are best enjoyed with an acknowledgement that they are separate stories, separate 'verses - which is probably better suited to Douglas Adams than most authors, considering the many varied and contradictory Hitchhikers' Guide stories he created.

Mini-review: The Fault In Our Stars, John Green

 Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never beenanything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten. (cover blurb) 

The Fault in Our Stars is one of those intensely human books that make you laugh even while your eyes are full of tears and you can't read any further. Hazel and Augustus are clever, witty teenagers, quirky thinkers that you can't help loving immediately. Their relationship is fun and natural, and made me really believe in love again. By 200 pages in, I just couldn''t imagine the world without them. But this book is about both life and death, with two teenage cancer sufferers falling in love even while facing their own mortality, and it's not fair.

How can any single book be so funny, so uplifting and so heartbreaking all at once? I guess that's what life is. With a few, well-chosen words in the right order, John Green makes poetry of simple prose and helps to bring understanding of the incomprehensible almost within reach. Green is without doubt one of the cleverest writers for teens out there. He knows.

Special kudos to Green for his correct identification, use and strategic abuse of the word "literally," and for his understanding of what star-crossed lovers really are.

Wonder, R. J. Palacio

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

Ten-year-old August Pullman is off to school for the first time, after being taught at home all his life. It would be a scary time for anyone, but Auggie draws attention. He has severe facial disfigurements that no one can help noticing. And for the first time, he will be constantly surrounded by people noticing, or trying very hard not to notice how he doesn't look like the other kids. Wonder is a simple, heartwarming story that follows Auggie and his friends and family through his first year at Beecher Prep School.

I defy anyone to read this book and not love Auggie. He is a bright spark, a good-natured and generally optimistic kid, although of course his situation gets him down at times. But with the support of a loving family, kind teacher and good friends, he gets through fifth grade and comes out the other side. Wonder is told from multiple viewpoints, a character-driven rather than action-filled novel that portrays the ups and downs of being ten - a ten-year-old with a particular and unusual set of difficulties, certainly, but one that can resonate with anyone who's been ten. I remember vividly the woes of still being a child when my classmates fancied themselves all-grown-up, just like Auggie and his friend Summer:

One of the things I'm not loving about this year is how a lot of the kids are acting like they're too grown-up to play things anymore. All they want to do is 'hang out' and 'talk' at recess.

After a lifetime of putting Auggie first, saying to herself, "hey, at least I don't have things as bad as him," his sister Via has her own worries. She, too is struggling with life at a new school, with friends who have drifted apart, a new boyfriend, and trying to find her own identity away from being "Auggie's sister."


Wonder is a superb book, and I would recommend it to anyone from about ten years old upwards. Although it shows that kids can be thoughtless, and adults can be ignorant - which is worse - it also reveals the best in human nature: kindness, family, friendship and loyalty. We can all learn a lot about acceptance and tolerance - not just from the characters around Auggie, but also in his attitudes to them. He is wise and forgiving, aware that people will double-take when they see him, no matter how kind they might be.

Like, it's okay, I know I'm weird looking, take a look, I don't bite. Hey, the truth is, if a Wookiee started going to school, I'd probably stare a bit! 

It was easy to love Auggie by reading about him on the page - but I was challenged to think about how I would treat him or think about him if I were to meet him in the street, or interact with him on a daily basis. Because, after all, Auggie is just a kid like anyone else. He may face challenges that others don't have to deal with, and that's not fair, but behind his face, he's just a ten-year-old boy with a Star Wars obsession.

To me, though, I'm just me. An ordinary kid.But hey, if they want to give me a medal for being me, that's okay. I'll take it. I didn't destroy a Death Star or anything like that, but I did just get through the fifth grade. And that's not easy, even if you're not me.

I was sent this book by Ellie from Musings of a Bookshop Girl. Thanks Ellie! :)

Movie Monday: Anne of Green Gables (1934 film)

Marilla, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting, realised that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to the youngest and merriest.

As in 1880 Prince Edward Island, so in 2012 on the Isle of Wight, spring begins to show itself. As the days grow longer, the sun becomes more visible and I find raspberry cordial for sale in Marks and Spencer, I realise it is time to be reacquainted with Anne of Green Gables. After a stressful week at work, my DVD and book came off the shelves almost of their own accord, and I took refuge with my oldest, most faithful literary friend.

Browsing Youtube, I found to my gratitude that someone had uploaded a much older Anne of Green Gables film, back from 1934. This is the film starring the actress who loved the character so much that she changed her stage name to Anne Shirley. Of course I had to watch it!

Being quite a short film, I felt that it was more "scenes from Anne of Green Gables" than a smoothly-run story,   though, at least to start with, it is pretty faithful. About the first half of the film is straight from the book, the dialogue lifted right off the pages. Mrs Lynde becomes Mrs Rachel Barry, and Diana's mother, which shocks the mind a bit when your mind knows the context inside out, knows the next word is "Lynde" and instead you hear "Barry." But it is a prudent choice for a film with a small cast and makes sense - or would do, if there were any reason to include Diana at all. In this film, Anne and Diana's friendship, which is much the heart of the book as the turbulent relationship between Anne and Gilbert, or Anne and the Cuthbert siblings, exists only to draw attention to how it is neglected. It would be less conspicuous if Diana were omitted entirely, as so many other characters are.

Anne Shirley (the actress) is sweet as Anne, and entirely convincing - part of the time. When Anne is caught up in her vivid imaginings and dreamworlds, "pretty nearly perfectly happy," she is as Anneish as anyone other than the Anne in my head could be (let's face it, as Anneish as anyone other than I could, if I had red hair, a Canadian accent and a pretty nose.) However, Anne Shirley (the character) spans a huge emotional range, from ecstatic joy to "the depths of despair," from intelligent, dreamy tranquility to a fiery temper, and Anne Shirley (the actress) only convinced me in the happy end of this scale. She was Anne, but not the whole Anne, the starry-eyed dreamer, but not the neglected, unloved orphan child. Anne was aged up to fourteen when Marilla and Matthew adopted her, but this didn't work for me. Much of Anne's appeal comes from the incongruity of having such a little girl with such a big vocabulary, and where I could expect an eleven-year-old or even thirteen-year-old Anne to break slates over Gilbert Blythe's head, or need to ask how to say her prayers, it did not quite ring true in this self-assured fourteen-year-old Anne.

But the most unconvincing part of this Anne was when Mrs Lynde - sorry, Barry - observed that "They didn't pick you for your looks" and called her "skinny and ugly."

Well, just look at her!

Matthew was quite adorable, all doleful-looking in dungarees and big puppy-dog eyes, shy but stubborn in his own way, and full of heart and a little more awareness of a sense of humour than Book-Matthew. He needs it - because by contrast, Marilla lacks the subtleties of the real Marilla, and comes across as usually, but inconsistantly angry, instead of merely repressed and strict. I felt that the filmmakers had looked at the words of the Marilla of the book, but failed to see the depths of a very complex character, taking all her words at face value and portraying the character thus. If this was all there was to Marilla, I didn't see that Anne would be much better off at Green Gables than at Mrs Blewitt's.

After the slate-breaking incident, however, the film goes off at a tangent, bending and rewriting the story to fit around the relationship with Gilbert and only the relationship with Gilbert, a Gilbert who, though kind of cute, is not Anne's match, a bit yokelly and telling her she reads too much.

Still, it's not a bad film, especially when you consider how old a film it is - older than The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind - with a tiny cast and running at less than an hour and a half. Curiously, I recognised some little moments in this film that were not in the book which must have influenced the makers of the later TV serial - notably when Anne attempts to "wrap Gilbert around her little finger," and get him to pay attention to her. Considering that Anne hated Gilbert at this point in the TV serial, it jarred with me as out of character (I ranted a bit about that in my review in 2009) but made a bit more sense if you include the earlier film in the Green Gables canon.

I missed many of the beloved scenes - the hair-dying, the raspberry cordial escapade, the story club - but the filmmakers had to pick and choose which story they were going to tell, and they went with the romance. And I'll admit it, I succumbed to the warm fuzzies, despite the omissions and changes to the plot.

It is Anne of Green Gables, after all.*

*which is more than I can say for the later installments of the Kevin Sullivan series. I refuse to recognise anything past Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel.

Death Comes to Pemberley, P.D. James

I was amused to see this book and recognise that a professional and renowned crime writer had turned her hand to writing fanfiction. There have been many unofficial sequels to Pride and Prejudice, ranging from the realistic to the ridiculous, sequels which focus on the Darcys' family life, sequels focusing on other Bennets, rewrites with zombies... and now, a sequel combined with a murder mystery. This could be fun, I thought. I received the book as a Christmas present from my sister, who seemed anxious in case I was offended and appalled that someone else dared to write a sequel to this classic.

Death Comes to Pemberley starts slowly, with a far more detailed recap of the events that led up to Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage than must surely be necessary, for why would anyone read this without a knowledge of Pride and Prejudice? It takes about 50 pages to get into the story, with plenty of detail of everyday life at Pemberley and Elizabeth's preparations for a ball. As I read these sections, I suspected that I would be more interested in the ordinary affairs of the Darcys and Bingleys, and the staff of Pemberley, than in the story itself!

When I read Return to the Hundred Acre Woods, the official sequel to A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books, I was struck by the amount of period detail that the author had put in, probably in order to create a realistic sense of the time of the story, detail that was never needed in the original stories because they were written to be contemporary. This is the case here, too. P. D. James has clearly put in a huge amount of research, but sometimes the research stifles the storytelling. Still, I do love to know all about the workings of Pemberley and the expansion of the world of Jane Austen's novels.

The tone of the novel, as necessitated by the combination of the Austen Sequel with the Crime genre, is considerably darker than Jane Austen's original. Shadows creep around the edges of the idyllic lifestyle, and Pemberley is furnished with not one, but two suicides in its history. There is a "gritty realism" to James's Pemberley, and her take on the characters and their relationships. I felt uncomfortably aware of how Lydia and Wickham have never quite been forgiven for their elopement, and never would. It was not all doom and gloom however, and occasionally, James came out with some wonderful Austenian (is that a word?) wit:

"There are few activities so agreeable as spending a friend's money to your own satisfaction and his benefit."

With most of the action set at Pemberley, we don't get to see much of the Bennets, but when we do meet Jane and Mr Bingley, they are instantly identifiable within a few words. Lydia, likewise, is just as she always has been - if not more so. We never get to see Mrs Bennet on the page, but her youngest daughter is growing daily more like her mother. I was also pleased to see a bit more of Georgiana Darcy, a character I liked but barely knew in the original novels. She is about twenty one by this point, and despite her shyness, the Darcy stubbornness is becoming apparent in her character. And although we don't get to see Mr Collins, or even read his letter to the Darcys after a murder took place in their grounds, the description of his epistle is priceless.

"He began by stating that he could find no words to express his shock and abhorrence, and then proceeded to find a great number, few of them appropriate and none of them helpful [...] He went on to prophesy a catalogue of disasters for the afflicted family ranging from the worst - Lady Catherine's displeasure and their permanent banishment from Rosings - descending to public ignominy, bankruptcy and death."

Interestingly, it is Elizabeth and Darcy who I felt were least themselves. Their characters were consistent, but  not strong, and I managed to sit through an entire Pemberley supper without registering the presence of the master of the house until he spoke - as if James hadn't known what to do with him until he was needed to move the plot onwards. The couple rarely even appear together in the same scene, and hardly interact, a disappointment considering that they are supposed to be the ultimate romantic couple.

And I've written this far without even mentioning the murder mystery. It is more of a "trial" mystery than a detective novel, with little on-scene investigation and lots of last-minute revelations. I was unsurprised by the killer's identity, as there was a pretty small pool of suspects, and I didn't believe James would dare to turn one of Jane Austen's characters into a killer.

All this might suggest that I didn't like Death Comes to Pemberley, but that's not true. It was never going to be what really happened next, but it was quite a respectable version of what could have happened. Once I'd got past the somewhat stodgy recap at the start of the book, I kept on promising myself "just one more chapter," or "just ten/twenty/fifty more pages" until I realised I had nearly finished, all in one evening. And although at least part of the ending was predictable, I found myself anxious on behalf of even the less sympathetic of Austen's characters. Death Comes to Pemberley was not a great work of literature - I suspect if you look long enough you'd find something better on fanfiction.net - but it was a fun, enjoyable page-turner, an easy read to help me through a reading slump.

Top Ten Tuesdays - Kids' Classics

Top Ten Tuesday is the brainchild of the ladies at The Broke and the Bookish, and this week the task is to list ten books of our favourite genre. A tricky one for me, as I read so many different types of books. Should I list classics? Fantasy? Any particular sub-genre of fantasy? Thrillers? Teen reads?

In the end I decided to go with:

The Top Ten Books That Shaped My Childhood.

These are the kids' books I would reread regularly, and still return to for a bit of comfort reading, the books that inspired my daydreams, make-believe games, fanfiction and not-really-very original fiction.

1. Anne of Green Gables. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed my blog for a while. Anne Shirley was a kindred spirit and probably the most "real" character I'd yet encountered in my reading.


2. The Chronicles of Narnia. For years, the back of my wardrobe was covered in tiny drawings of characters and scenes from this book, cut out and stuck on with blu-tak, in an approximation of a map. If I couldn't actually get to Narnia through my wardrobe, my imagination provided the next best thing.

3. Swallows and Amazons. Oh, for the freedom to spend one's childhood camping, sailing and adventuring, in a world where the lines between real life and fantasy are blurred and where you can live out the stories in your head. That is what childhood should be.

4. Famous Five. I think Enid Blyton was generally disapproved of by schoolteachers and librarians when I was a kid, and I couldn't understand why. Her adventure stories appeal to the imagination of adventurous children with ruined castles, rugged moors and caves galore - and of course, lashings of ginger beer!

5. Malory Towers. I found the first book in this series in the school book box when I was in the middle of my Famous Five craze. This launched me into the world of old-time boarding school stories, midnight feast and hilarious pranks, and inspired my first "novel": First Time At Abbey School, which was basically Malory Towers with the names and events jiggled around. I was very proud of that story, which was handwritten, in pencil, in a Lion King exercise book. I probably ought to type it up before it fades away completely.

6. Chalet School. When it became apparent that I had discovered school stories and wasn't going to give them up, I was bought the first in the Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. This series follows the school from its beginning with two teachers and three students above an Austrian lake in the late 1920s. Little did the author foresee the way the series must accommodate real historical events several years later - but the Chalet School in Exile, in which the school flees Austria to escape the Nazis, is uindoubtedly the best book of them all. It is remarkable for being a contemporary account of Austria in 1938, written by an Englishwoman and for children.

7. The Railway Children. When I was small, I used to swap toys and books with one of my best friends until my mother put a stop to it. One of the books I did get from her was the ladybird edition of The Railway Children, which became a favourite. Many years later, I was given the "real," full story, and it was wonderful to discover that there was so much more than I had realised.


8. What Katy Did. I was probably given my Katy omnibus because of the heroine's name. The books can be a bit moralising and sickly in places - this is Victorian children's literature, after all - but there are such vivid descriptions of Katy and her siblings' antics and games that I could quite happily imagine myself among them.

9. Little House on the Prairie. Let me put my hands up and say that I have never watched the more well-known TV series, which seems to have a reputation for being too sweet and wholesome to be true. I've lived with the movie in my head for so long that I would jealously resent anyone showing me their version.

10. Anastasia Krupnik. This is probably the odd one out, being the only book or series written after about 1950! Anastasia is "the girl who thinks for herself," and with each book she has a brand-new interest or obsession or project - very much like myself, both then and now. Most of the books end each chapter with a list (things I love/things I hate,) a story-in-progress or a school project, which show Anastasia developing and maturing as a character. She's got a loveable, artistic family, even if her little brother Sam is too precocious to be true.

February mini-reviews.

Hi everyone. Despite my lack of blog posts recently, I've actually been reading a lot, I just haven't had an awful lot to say about any of the books. However, I felt it was about time to share some thoughts on a few of the things that I've been reading.

Sandman - Neil Gaiman

Since discovering that one of the Island libraries has nearly all of the Sandman graphic novels, I have been making regular trips and marching through the series, before passing them on to my friend. There is a wide variety in the style and format of stories, like an elaborate patchwork quilt: one volume will be a long narrative, and the next made up of short stories. Some star the titular Sandman, Dream, and his Endless siblings: Destiny, Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair and Destruction, whereas in other volumes they only appear occasionally, around the edges of the stories, so to speak.

I'm currently up to vol. 8: Worlds' End, in which travellers from all through time, space and contradictory but co-existing realities find themselves stranded by a storm in an Inn, in which they occupy their time by telling stories of all flavours and styles. But the storm is not an ordinary storm, but a "reality storm" caused by something strange and rare and unexplained. When the tales have all been told, the travellers go to the window and see a strange thing in the sky, a thing that none could explain or understand, but somehow we all, reader and character alike, could sense that things were never going to be the same again. Behind the pages of the stories told in Worlds' End, another story has been taking place, a story of enormous significance, hidden from the eyes of the ordinary - extraordinary - folk who dwell in the Sandman universe(s) and yet to be revealed to the readers, no doubt in volume 9.

I felt almost afraid to turn the page,
fascinated but scared of what I might see in the sky.

By this point, Sandman has become more than "just a comic book" to be a masterpiece of storytelling, in any format.

Submarine -  Joe Dunthorne

Submarine is a coming-of-age tale of Oliver Tate, a precocious teenage boy, an account of his relationships with family, friends and girls, and his observations of the world around him. It is an intelligent, somewhat poetic read, and one which led me back to my Superior Person's Book of Words to indulge the word-nerd tendencies that I share with the narrator. However, I didn't altogether like Oliver - he was a rather obnoxious kid - and the scenes in which he participated in the bullying of a classmate were an insurmountable barrier between me and the book, and Dunthorne seemed to rely too much on cringe-comedy and explicit content for my tastes - possibly appropriate for a tale about a teenage boy. I'm not saying that I entirely disliked Submarine, but I don't feel that I have gained anything from having read it, and shan't be rereading or watching the film.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (reread)

When I first read the series a couple of years ago, I wrote, "I'm not sure that The Hunger Games is as amazing as the hype had led me to believe, but it is a very good book, and it was a lot better than the book blurb and my reading taste came together to expect." Catching Fire won me over, and evidently the story lingered in my brain, because over the last months I've had dream after dream about being in that arena, about being Katniss Everdeen. With the hype mounting for the new film which comes into cinemas next month, I am still undecided whether or not I actually want to see it. 

The trailer is amazing. Watching it, I felt tears stab at my eyes a couple of times, when Katniss shouts in desperation and love for her sister: "I volunteer!" and the salute to her from the citizens of District 12. And yet - there is a movie already in my mind that I feel a fierce attachment and loyalty to. Flicking through The Tribute Guide which came into bookstores recently, I nearly shouted aloud, "You are NOT President Snow!" (Donald Sutherland is an excellent actor and I am sure he will play the part admirably, but he is not my President Snow.) Some pictures looked perfect, while others I judged as "too sci-fi." Jennifer Lawrence is almost Katniss, Josh Hutcherson a passable Peeta, Gale I never had a very strong image of, so he'll do. Rue. Cinna. Effie Trinket. Prim. All fine. Great, even. It looks a like a great movie. 

But I'm still not certain. The concept of the book - children killing each other for entertainment purposes - repelled me, and watching it as a film takes you closer to the real experience, the discomfort of knowing you'll be watching the Hunger Games recreated, rather than reading about them. (Maybe that's just me.) And the other thing: I have a phobia of wasps - can't even say or type the word without flinching, and there is a horrific scene with mutant wasps, or "tracker-jackers." Is this spheksophobia strong enough to deter me from watching the film?

Reading The Hunger Games the second time around, I realise that Katniss' affections could go either way, being manipulated and fabricated before she's really aware that she has any romantic feelings, being formed by her circumstances. Interestingly, on my first time reading the books, if I had any strong opinions on the matter, I suppose I was slightly in favour of Team Peeta, whereas this time I'm veering more towards Team Gale. I wonder what has changed.

Wish Me Luck - Margaret Dickinson

I picked up this cosy wartime romance in a charity shop years ago, and forgot that I'd even got it until yesterday, when I wanted a break from the doom and gloom of Panem. I have little time for romance, whether that be Mills and Boon, or chick lit, but occasionally I'll make an exception for a sweet story from the "granny" section of the bookstore, wartime romances, family sagas, usually seeming to take place in World War 2 Liverpool. Wish Me Luck is the story of Fleur, a WAAF (women's branch of the Royal Air Force) girl who falls in love with an RAF officer. Their relationship is marred, not only by the dangers of being in love during wartime, but by their parents, whose own pasts are intertwined by secrets long gone but never forgotten.

Wish Me Luck is a light, easy read. Dickinson's style is simple but warm. She hooked me with the mysteries and kept the plot twisting so that it wasn't predictable. She recreates 1940s Lincolnshire and Nottingham well, peopled with a likeable, well-rounded cast. With one exception. Fleur's mother was too unpleasant, a bitter, shrieking harridan who is never given much development or redemption, and towards the end, I felt that the story tailed off a little. Of course it is inevitable that any book set on the home front of World War 2 is going to feature some sort of tragedy, but it all seemed to come at once, like an avalanche of heartbreak, all at once. Still, Wish Me Luck is a very sweet, "nice" sort of story over all, and despite the deluge of disaster before the happy ending, just the sort of book to cheer me up when I was feeling low.

The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland

I wanted to fall in love again, I realised. Not with a man. I’m far too lazy and selfish right now to arrange my life around another person’s. I’m too fond of going where I want, doing what I want, when I want, acting on the spur of the moment without having to be accountable to someone else. No, what I wanted was to fall in love with a story. To discover something brand-new that grabs me by the brain and imagination and takes me entirely by surprise. Something that would mean my life would not be quite the same after having read it.

Seeing Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief in the library, I wondered if, perhaps, this might be The One. I had vague memories of my friend Anna recommending Mr Coupland - possibly JPod - and Girlfriend In A Coma has been on my to-read-maybe-one-day list for so long I can’t even remember why any more. My friend Anna is very clever and a bit nerdy but in such a way to make it cool, and she likes Neil Gaiman and has purple hair. If she recommended Coupland, maybe I would like him too. Anyway, I’d give him a try. The blurb on the back hooked me: “Bethany discovers Roger’s notebook and finds that he’s writing diary entries pretending to be her - and weirdly, he’s getting it right.”

Of course, when you go looking to spontaneously fall in love and be taken by surprise, you’re doomed to failure. The Gum Thief is entertaining and voices many truths about Life, The Universe and Everything™ - especially if you’re stuck in a dead-end job in retail - but ultimately, I did not connect emotionally with the book. When reading, the pages passed quickly, with multiple narrators and short chapters to keep interest, but I didn’t feel a great urge to return to it when I’d put it down. The book’s tone was subdued. Roger is in his forties divorced and disillusioned, while Bethany is a twenty four year old goth living at home with her mother, with vague plans of visiting Europe with her new boyfriend, but no real plans for the future. I could identify with Roger’s and Bethany’s observations in their working life in a Staples superstore, and I liked the characters well enough, but somehow I felt distanced from their world.

As well as Roger’s and Bethany’s diaries and letters to each other - interspersed with the occasional letter from Bethany’s mother and other Staples employees, many chapters of The Gum Thief are chapters from Roger’s attempt at a novel: Glove Pond. Unfortunately, this novel is bad. Deliberately bad writing - at least deliberate on Coupland’s part - full of dry dialogue, telling-not-showing, faux-intellectual ponderings on life and creative but not quite successful imagery. And when so much of a book is full of bad writing and pretentiousness, even as a literary device, the lingering impression I take away from reading the book is - bad writing and pretentiousness. Glove Pond colours The Gum Thief - or perhaps I should say it sucks out all the colour, leaving a white and grey, cold and somewhat empty-feeling novel.

Or, conversely, maybe the fictional-within-fiction Glove Pond helps to draw attention to what colour does exist in Roger’s and Bethany’s apparently bleak, dull lives. It makes the chapters written by them interesting by comparison. Time will tell which of these contradictory impressions of The Gum Thief is stronger in my mind.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My best friend, Judith, is only two months older than me, but when we were at school, she was in the year above me. This proved very useful when it came to discovering literature. Many a book I read and loved came second-hand through her talking about what she was studying in English. This was certainly the case for my first Sherlock Holmes stories. I must have been either ten or eleven, and after her raving about Holmes, I just had to find out what all the fuss was about. Even at eleven, I didn't like missing out on a good story. I vividly remember that I read four stories, one of which was "The Speckled Band," which captivated me, appealing to my slightly ghoulish imagination. This must have been one of my first really grown-up stories, and it was like nothing I'd ever read before.

I've read The Hound of the Baskervilles a few times, but aside from that, Sherlock Holmes lay at the back of my mind for many years. I watched a few stories on TV, acquired much of the knowledge through the osmosis of popular culture, but didn't read much until about eighteen months ago, when BBC started airing Sherlock for the first time. The series sent me right back to the original stories: A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of Four. After an unusually long wait for a second series of a TV show, Sherlock returned to the screens once more on New Year's Day this year, and I returned to the next volume of the series: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.


After two novels, the third installment is a collection of short stories. This makes the book easy to dip in and out of, and you need little knowledge of what has come before, but can read the stories in any order - there may be a throwaway reference to "the case of..." but nothing that has any bearing on the tale. In fact, the stories aren't even compiled in chronological order - some are set after Watson's marriage, others before. They are narrated by Dr Watson, as written up long after the event. Though far from simple stories, they are told simply, often to the same formula: The problem is presented, Dr Watson, the client and the reader are all baffled, but not Sherlock Holmes, oh no! He ponders a lot, asks strange questions, goes out, solves the mystery then comes back and then tells us how he did it. My favourite stories in the collection are those which have a little less talking and a little more action, those stories in which Watson gets to go "on location" with Holmes.

Some of the tales are rather silly, such as "The Blue Carbuncle" - a valuable jewel which nearly ends up in the Christmas dinner. Two stories require suspension of disbelief as dodgy characters fool those closest to them with disguised identities, and then there is "The Red-Headed League." A fun, entertaining and cunning tale, but how gullible was Holmes's client, duped into joining this fictitious club, just for gingers?

Adventures also contains some of the most wonderful and memorable cases. We meet The Woman, Irene Adler, the one woman Sherlock acknowledges. There is the gruesome tale of the "Engineer's Thumb," and the "Copper Beeches" mystery, first dismissed by Holmes as his "zero point" for interest, but which turns out to be one of the most intriguing and exciting of all. And of course, "The Speckled Band," my old friend, the original locked-door mystery.

Yes, reading these stories, sometimes I found myself rolling my eyes at some of these cliched tropes - but let's not forget that they were not cliched. These are the original twisty page-turning detective stories, those that helped to invent the genre. I won't say Conan Doyle was the inventor - check out Poe's Auguste Dupin stories that came before - but for twists and thrills and cleverness, I think nothing has topped the Sherlock Holmes series in over a century. Maybe Agatha Christie put up a fair fight.

The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson

What is a psychopath? That is the question at the heart of Jon Ronson’s book which is advertised as: “A journey through the madness industry.” What is a psychopath, how are psychopaths diagnosed, is there a cure, and what is the difference between psychopaths who are institutionalised, and the psychopaths at the top of the institutions: politics, business, entertainment and so on? These are just some of the questions Ronson explores in his study in madness.

In his research for this book, Ronson meets a man who feigned madness to try to escape a prison sentence – only to discover it is impossible to prove his sanity. In a chapter that reads more like the “madness literature” of Catch-22 or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, every action “Tony” takes to show that, in fact, he is not insane, is taken as evidence that, in fact, he is. Or that he is not mad, but still a psychopath.

Ronson catalogues historic diagnoses and attempts at treating psychopathy – and his findings are surreal, sometimes disastrous, often seeming more like a skewed fiction than reality – interviews the psychologist responsible for coming up with the definitive psychopathy test, and starts applying the test to various people he meets: the mass-murderer, the top businessman with ruthless ambition and a love for firing people, the M15 agent-turned-conspiracy theorist. And yes, it certainly seems that the same traits that label some people as “psychopaths” are those that are encouraged in the people judged as “most successful.” Is society really run my psychopaths?

At the same time, Ronson argues, it is easy for people to be misdiagnosed, and especially in this day and age, any strangeness or eccentricity is easily – too easily – categorised as “mental disorders,” sometimes with disastrous results. Where do we draw the line? is the question we are left asking, in the fragile balancing act between “madness” and “sanity.”

I’m not a natural reader of non-fiction, but I found Ronson’s style to be easy-going, understandable considering I have no background in psychology, a curious and fascinating, if somewhat frightening insight into the world of diagnosing psychopathy.