138, WG81, F64, E131 / NG57, M69, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

Auch dieses Buch wollte wiedergelesen werden und schloss natürlich nahtlos an das erste Buch von Hogan an. Neben der nahegehenden Schilderung der Verlustverarbeitung finde ich die Beschreibung des viktorianischen Friedhofes und seiner Grabsteine mit den Biografien der Verstorbenen sehr faszinierend.
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And what's your excuse?' I ask. 'Your beautiful singing is wasted on dead people.'
Sally laughs. 'It's the best audience I've ever had! Besides,' her face was serious again now, 'singing is never wasted. And it is the only music you can carry with you everywhere and always.'
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Unlike the Victorians who built this place, people nowadays seem to think that cemeteries are morbid places and to visit them for recreational purposes is at best creepy and at worst, tempting fate. But perhaps it is the confrontation of their own mortality that really unsettles them. After all, it is the only certainty that we all share. However fit, fabulous, rich, double-jointed, brilliant, brave, funny or fastidious about cleaning our teeth we are, we are all going to die. It may not seem fair, but there it is. As Thomas Gray reminds us, 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave'.
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But a photograph of your dead child was better than no photograph at all, because memories are not enough. The pictures in your heads are unreliable. They shift and face and scatter like broken reflections on restless water, and one day they may disappear completely. A paper picture is insurance.
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Of course, nowadays, people are rather uppity about the Victorians' approach to death, condemning it as excessive, sentimental and overly dramatic. But I'm not sure our attitude towards it is any better. Our considered approach to death is to try very hard to ignore it. We can't even say it. We say someone has 'passed away'. We talk about having 'lost' someone, or someone being 'late'. They are neither lost nor late. We know perfectly well where they are, and they're not late, they're just not coming.
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(Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, 2018)

137, WG80, F63, E130 / NG57, M69, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Ruth Hogan, The Keeper of Lost Things

Das Wiederlesen dieses Buches war eigentlich überfällig. Die heiter-wehmütige Geschichte gefiel mir genauso gut wie beim ersten Lesen, wenn auch im Nachhinein viele Handlungsfäden ein bißchen zu harmonisch enden. Dafür sind die Geschichten hinter den verlorenen Dingen oft düster genug um einen guten Ausgleich zu bieten. Ich hab immer noch nicht nachgesehen, ob es so eine Webseite wirklich gibt. Schön wärs auf jeden Fall.

33, NG9, F16, E31 / WG24, M15, MF2, D2, B1, NA0, C0

Ruth Hogan, Madame Burova

Das neueste Buch von Ruth Hogan schlug pünktlich am 1. April auf meinem Paperwhite auf (nettes Veröffentlichungsdatum) und als ich endlich dazu kam, hatte ich es auch in anderthalb Tagen durch. Vor allem im letzten Drittel, bevor mir langsam dämmerte wer Billies biologische Eltern waren, war es wieder zu spannend um es wegzulegen. Einige der Red Herrings kommen mir im Nachinein zu kontruiert vor und die Charaktere könnten auch etwas ausgefeilter sein, aber vor allem Imeldas Lesungen waren klasse und ließen mich wünschen, dass Hogan davon noch mehr eingebaut hätte.

My mother killed my father when I was seven years old. Now, thirty-nine years later, she is dead too, and I am an orphan.

(Ruth Hogan, aus: Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel, 2019)
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Ruth Hogan, Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel

Mit dem dritten Buch hat es Ruth Hogan endgültig zu einer meiner 'regulären' Autorinnen gebracht, deren zukünftige Werke (von denen es hoffentlich noch viele geben wird) bei mir schon vorgemerkt sind. Auch wenn vieles im Nachhinein als zu sehr in Richtung Feelgood und harmonisch erscheint, bleibt die Geschichte mit ihrem ständigen Wechsel zwischen der erwachsenen Tilda und der siebenjährigen Tilly sehr bewegend und so faszinierend, dass ich sie wieder mal viel zu schnell las. Aber dem kann ja mit einem Wiederlesen irgendwann mal abgeholfen werden.

Achja, einen tollen ersten Satz hatte das Buch auch wieder. Und etliche zitierenswerte Stellen auch.
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It is etched glass with a large, delicate bowl and a tall, slender stem twisted like barley sugar. It is clearly also 'for best'; a precious confection spun out of fragile, glistening glass. But what good is its beauty if it is never seen and never used? It might just as well be a plastic tumbler. What was my mother saving it for? She could hardly have been expecting a chance call from a local dignitary, or a random visit from a passing celebrity or minor member of the royal family. My mother seems to have lived her whole life buttoned up in a stiff, starchy suit of 'what ifs', 'keep for bests' and 'what will people thinks'. A bright summer dress of 'chase the stars', 'seize the days' and 'hang the consequences' might have fitted her so much better if only she had dared to try it on.
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(Ruth Hogan, Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel, 2019)

1. Satz des Prologs:

The old woman fills her lungs with the crisp autumn air, throws open her arms and exhales a flawless top C.

1. Satz des ersten Kapitels:

Today's pool temperature is 6.3; a little warmer than a mortuary, but then I am not quite dead yet.

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

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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)