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Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

Ich hatte garnicht damit gerechnet, dass dieses Buch noch besser sein würde als Hogans erstes, so erfolgreiches Buch 'The Keeper of Lost Things', und wurde höchst angenehm überrascht. Die Story an sich um den Verlust eines Kindes ist schon so bewegend, dass ich mich kaum von dem Buch losreißen konnte, aber die vielen Ergänzungen - Geschichten zu Grabsteinen, Vergleiche mit Sitten und Gebräuchen der Viktorianer, Zitate zu den witzigsten Gelegenheiten aus dem Book of Etiquette von Lady Troubridge, dem britischen Pendant zu Knigge und immer wieder Lebensgeschichten, mal kurz, mal ausführlicher - machen es zu etwas Besonderem. Ich hoffe, dass es von Ruth Hogan noch viel mehr zu lesen gibt. Und bald.
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But there will be no angel to mark my grave. No one will come to my funeral except the undertakers and the vicar. There will be no flowers, no hymns, no tear-jerking music. No tears at all, in fact. Because there will be no mourners. The care home - or Happy Endings, as I have nicknamed it - where I shall have spent my old age waiting for death in inappropriate frocks and shoes, smelling of cheap rose talcum powder and wee and wearing smudged red lipstick on my teeth, will be very glad to be rid of me. The vicar, who will no doubt be short and skinny, with a weak chin and a lisp, and wearing beige Y-fronts under his vestments (or, in these days of fledgling ecumenical equality, thousand-wash-grey knickers and a bra with as much 'come hither' as a dentist's chair) will probably dismiss my coffin to the burner with the words 'Thunderbirds are go!'
I might get a prayer if I'm lucky.
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From here I can see the mourners returning to the cars, and none of them is wearing black. There is green and brown and blues, and even red. But no black. It was probably stipulated in the funeral notice - 'No black'. No bombazine. It seems to be more usual nowadays for bright colours to be worn to 'celebrate the life of the deceased'. Lady T must be turning in her grave. Her advice on this matter is unequivocal: 'Vivid colours, either on a man or a woman, show a disregard for the feeling of the mourners, a lack of respect for oneself, and a distinct ignorance of the laws of good conduct.'
She would undoubtedly feel that brightly dressed funeral guests were not taking the matter seriously, but I should prefer people at my funeral to be seriously stylish in scarlet, rather than bleak and boring in black.
The doors of the limousines are closed with a soft clunk by the undertakers; serious and dignified now in their tall hats. The cars snake slowly down the hill, under the arch of the lodge building and out of the iron gates. As the cortège disappears back into the land of the living, I wonder if the grieving family cocooned inside the long black cars are looking out at the bustling streets where daily life continues, callously regardless of their loss. I wonder if any of them is thinking, as I have done, 'How can the rest of the world be so completely unaffected by this death? How can everything else be so normal?'
But death is normal. We just can't admit it anymore.

(Ruth Hogan, The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, 2018)

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Marie Reiners, Frauen die Bärbel heißen

Ja, das ist die Autorin, die 'Mord mit Aussicht' erfunden hat, und das und die Tatsache, dass die Protagonistin eine Variante meines Namens trägt und dazu auch zu meiner Generation gehört, machten mich doch richtig neugierig auf das Ostergeschenk meiner Mutter, obwohl es kein E-Book sondern die gebundene Ausgabe ist. Aber noch handlich genug zum lesen, und bei allem Makabren so spannend, dass ich es recht flott durchhatte. Die skurrilen Abenteuer der geradezu erfrischend ungewöhnlichen Protagonistin machten auch Lust auf mehr - und das sollte bei dem Ende wohl auch nur eine Frage der Zeit sein.

Ich seufzte unwillkürlich, und der Laut klang selbst für meine Ohren resigniert. Was wusste ich schon über Frauen? Warum waren sie nur so ... so blöde? Was trieb sie dazu, sich derartig lächerlich aufzuführen, wenn Gefühle ins Spiel kamen? Nicht, dass ich annahm, dass Männer klüger, fähiger, vernunftbegabter gewesen wären. Das waren sie definitiv nicht. Das MAMIL, Kommissar Lichtblau, Overcomb: Ebensolche Idioten wie Liberty oder Karin, nur anders.
Warum gab es kein drittes Geschlecht? Ich mochte weder Männer noch Frauen. Es konnte doch einfach nicht sein, dass dieses fitzelige, fleischige, feuchte Untenrum - bei Frauen die Vagina, bei Männern das Sie wissen schon plus auch noch diese hässlichen Hoden - wirklich für alles Böse, das sich die Menschen antaten, verantwortlich zeichnete? Warum waren nicht zumindest ein paar meiner Mitmenschen so wie ich? Sich selbst genügend, nicht fordernd, nicht obsessiv, nicht neugierig, nicht ständig irgendetwas von anderen erwartend? Pflanzen waren die besseren Bewohner dieses Planeten. Oder hatten jemals Seegras oder Blutbuchen irgendwem Ärger gemacht?

(aus: Marie Reiners, Frauen, die Bärbel heißen, 2018)

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Lawrence Block, Hit List

Ich bin mir nicht sicher, aber das könnte das erste Mal sein, dass ich einen schon von vorneherein als E-Book gekauften Band nochmal gelesen habe. Aber bei an die 200 Titeln auf dem Paperwhite wurde es eigentlich auch mal Zeit, und der zeitliche Abstand war auch lang genug. Und es zeigte mir auch einmal mehr, wie fabelhaft Block vor allem bei Dialogen ist.

"When I said I'd been picked for a jury, the first thing my sister-in-law said was maybe I'd be on TV. You know, if they panned the jury. Which I don't think they're supposed to, but who cares anyway? What's the big deal about having your face on a few million television screens?"
"I think it makes it real," Keller said. "You'll see some woman, her baby gets eaten by a coyote, and some reporter sticks a microphone in her face and asks her how she feels."
"And instead of telling him to go fuck himself, like you'd think a normal human being would do -"
"She answers the question and shares her pain with the world. People thinnk that's what they're supposed to do. They think you have to be on television if you get the chance, because it validates your experience."

(Lawrence Block, Hit List, 2000)

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Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

Auf dieses Buch stieß ich bei Twitter in einem Tweet von Diane Duane und sah es sofort bei Amazon nach - Märchen kann ich nun einmal selten wiederstehen. Märchen hat es hier wirklich satt, lange und kurze, witzige und langatmige Epen, aus aller Herren Länder. Einige kannte ich schon, wie die aus Grimms Märchen und aus der norwegischen Sammlung und fand es interessant sie in Englisch zu lesen (besonders 'Clever Gretel' und 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon'). Alles in allem ein echter Fund, auch wegen des langen und interessanten Vorworts, das Angela Carter noch kurz vor ihrem Tod fertigstellte.

The history, sociology and psychology transmitted to us by fairy tales is unofficial - they pay even less attention to national and international affairs than do the novels of Jane Austen. They are also anonymous and genderless. We may know the name and gender of the particular individual who tells a particular story, just because the collector noted the name down, but we can never know the name of the person who invented that story in the first place. Ours is a highly individualized culture, with a great faith in the work of an art as a unique one-off, and the artist as an original, a godlike and inspired creator of unique one-offs. But fairy tales are not like that, nor are their makers. Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a definite recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of domestic arts. 'This is how I make potato soup.'
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I haven't put this collection together from such heterogeneous sources to show that we are all sisters under the skin, part of the same human family in spite of a few superficial differences. I don't believe that, anyway. Sisters under the skin we might be, but that doesn't mean we've got much in common. (See Part Six, 'Unhappy Families'.) Rather, I wanted to demonstrate the extraordinary richness and diversity of responses to the same common predicament - being alive - and the richness and diversity with which femininity, in practice, is represented in 'unofficial' culture: its strategies, its plots, its hard work.

(Angela Carter, Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, 1990/1992)

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Julian Barnes, The Only Story

Wie fast alle Bücher von Barnes stimmte mich dieses meist wehmütig. Und nachdenklich. Und wie immer finde ich es einfach nur bewundernswert wie gut er Erinnerungen, Situationen, Zeiten und Gefühle beschreibt, so gut, dass ich mich kaum davon losreißen konnte und - mal wieder - versucht bin das halbe Buch hier zu zitieren.

We tend to slot any new relationship we come across into a pre-existing category. We see what is general or common about it; whereas the participants see - feel - only what is individual abd particular to them. We say: how predictable; they say: what a surprise! One of the things I thought about Susan and me - at the time, and now, again, all these years later - is that there often didn't seem words for our relationship; at least none that fitted. But perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description.
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Sad sex is when she is sober, you both desire one another, you know that you will always love her regardless, just as she will always love you regardless, but you - both of you, perhaps - now realize that loving one another does not necessarily lead to happiness. And so your lovemaking has become less a search for consolation than a hopeless attempt to deny your mutual unhappiness.
Good sex is better than bad sex. Bad sex is better that no sex, except when no sex is better than bad sex. Self-sex is better than no sex, except when no sex is better than self-sex. Sad sex is always far worse than good sex, bad sex, self-sex and no sex. Sad sex is the saddest sex of all.
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He had shocked his parents with his sexual behaviour. Now he was shocked when sex was so often portrayed as mindless, heartless, thoughtless shagging. But why the surprise? Each generation assumes that it has got sex just about right; each patronises the previous generation but feels queasy about the succeeding one. This was normal.
As for the wider question of age, and mortality; no, he didn't think he felt a panic at the shutting of the doors. But maybe he hadn't yet heard their hinges creak loudly anough.
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(Julian Barnes, The Only Story, 2018)

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Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

Der Band paßte gerade noch in meine Lesezeit bevor das neue Buch von Julian Barnes auf dem Paperwhite eintrudelte. Immer wieder schön: das ungleiche und unharmonische Team Detritus und Cuddy - schade, dass es nur für dieses Buch reichte, aber im Grunde verständlich.

It was the way he wore the place. You expected him any moment to break into the kind of song that has suspicious rhymes and phrases like 'my kind of town' and 'I wanna be a part of it' in it; the kind of song where people dance in the street and give the singer apples and join in and a dozen lowly matchgirls suddenly show amazing choreographical ability and everyone acts like cheery lovable citizens instead of the murderous, evil-minded, selfcentred individuals they suspect themselves to be. But the point was that if Carrot had erupted into a song and dance, people would have joined in. Carrot could have jollied a circle of standing stones to form up behind him and do a rumba.

(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms, 1993)

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Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

Vielleicht hätte ich doch mit 'Men at Arms' weitermachen sollen, aber jetzt ist es zu spät, und wenn man die Serie schon so oft gelesen hat, spielt es auch keine Rolle mehr...

He could hear his granny speaking, 'No one's too poor to buy soap.' Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit the world, and what had the poor bastards done to deserve that?
Cockbill Street people would stand aside to let the meek through. For what kept them in Cockbill Street, mentally and physically, was their vague comprehension that there were rules. And they went through life filled with a quiet, distracted dread that they weren't quite obeying them.
People said there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigible lawless. All the laws and the rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.

(Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay, 1996)