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Alice Pleasance Liddell, by Lewis Carroll, 1858.

This is the little girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland.

(national portrait gallery)

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Daria for Prada: perfection. The dress with the lip prints is one of the most beautiful things ever created.
The poem she recites is The Thunder, Perfect Mind from the Nag Hammadi library. Read the text here.
(via fashionista)

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I've just finished reading The Winter Vault, the second novel by Anne Michaels. Her first, Fugitive Pieces, is my favourite book (and I don't say that lightly; I read a lot, I've given it a lot of thought, and I'm yet to find anything I've loved as much).

An interview with the author, from the Guardian, is here.

"- At the cemetery, said Jean, nearby to Elisabeth's grave
was the grave of another child. There someone had left a magnificent garden of
plastic flowers. Ferns grew lush out of a thick square of florists' foam, and in
the foliage stood two painted china dogs. Each plastic flower had been carefully
chosen; roses, hyacinths, tulips, lily of the valley. There was love in each
moulded crevice of leaves and petals.

I remember when I was young looking at plastic flowers
in a shop. I heard someone say, 'They're not real' and I couldn't understand
what they meant - I was holding one in my hand, of course they were
real.

The child's garden rested on its thick green foam
above the cold spring ground. It was as real as anything. A child would have
thought that garden beautiful.

Everything that has been made from love is
alive."

Anne Michaels:

What am I trying to say in The Winter Vault? Among other things, that it is not enough not to do harm; one must also do good. That regret and shame are not the end of the story; they are its middle.

This plastic garden, near the end of the book, represents a kind of redemption; a coming to terms with much that has been discussed; a laying to rest. Any consolation is hard won; the redemption is of a very subtle nature. But I would not publish anything that did not have, at its heart, what I feel to be an unassailable argument for hope.

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Disguise, by Hugo Hamilton, is about a family post World War II. During the final stages of the war, a mother loses her baby son in an explosion; to console her, her father finds an orphaned Jewish baby boy of the same age, and convinces her to treat him as her own. She never tells her husband that the child is not theirs. A friend of the family alludes to it during the boy's teenage years, but the mother denies it vehemently, and the boy is left with lingering doubts about his origins and a displaced sense of belonging. The novel is about identity, unease, and deception, but as the Guardian reviewer notes, it is 'haunting' and 'oddly consoling.' It's told out of chronological order, from the perspective of the boy looking back at the age of 60, and is beautifully written and very engaging.

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Another covetable fashion tome, with two Aussie stars on the cover/s. Published by Taschen; pulls together highlights from their Fashion Now! series; edited by iD's Terry Jones.
100 Contemporary Fashion Designers.

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I Found Her Out There

I found her out there
On a slope few see,
That falls westwardly
To the salt-edged air,
Where the ocean breaks
On the purple strand,
And the hurricane shakes
The solid land.

I brought her here,
And have laid her to rest
In a noiseless nest
No sea beats near.
She will never be stirred
In her loamy cell
By the waves long heard
And loved so well.

So she does not sleep
By those haunted heights
The Atlantic smites
And the blind gales sweep,
Whence she often would gaze
At Dundagel's far head,
While the dipping blaze
Dyed her face fire-red;

And would sigh at the tale
Of sunk Lyonnesse,
As a wind-tugged tress
Flapped her cheek like a flail;
Or listen at whiles
With a thought-bound brow
To the murmuring miles
She is far from now.

Yet her shade, maybe,
Will creep underground
Till it catch the sound
Of that western sea
As it swells and sobs
Where she once domiciled,
And joy in its throbs
With the heart of a child.

--Thomas Hardy

One of my favourites. I first read it at university, and still love it. (via google)

Night Stories

I'm a big Paul Auster fan - loved the Brooklyn Follies and the New York Trilogy. This one is a layer-cake of stories, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's about an elderly man recovering from a car accident, living with his daughter and granddaughter. He's an insomniac, but instead of dwelling on the sadness in his life (his wife's recent death and the murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend), he tries to push back those thoughts by telling himself fantastical stories as he lies awake in bed at night. I raced through this book, but I found it thought-provoking, and quite lovely. Enjoy.

Prelude IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

TS Eliot, 1917
(via wsu)

Books from Jane

My friend Jane gave me these two books, both of which I loved. Mangoes is a political satire, about the assassination of General Zia. It's clever, funny, and interesting. Lush Life is set in the Lower East Side of New York, and is gritty and smart and a brilliant read. I don't know how he manages to capture the dialogue and the scene without becoming cheesy: great writing. Reviews in the hyper-links. Thanks Jane!

Booker Prize 2009

A good guide to the short-list here

(via the guardian)

Jill

I've just finished reading Jill, by Philip Larkin. It's set at Oxford University during the second world war, from the perspective of a crushingly socially-awkward boy on a scholarship, who shares a room with the big-man-on-campus.

I bought it because I've always liked Larkin's poetry, and because the blurb on the back said that it "is now regarded by many critics as a classic of its kind." I really enjoyed it. It's very readable, and there's a quietness about it, as well as a sense of something ominous looming just outside the frame. The characters are very finely drawn, and the language emotive, as you would expect from such a wonderful poet. He wrote it when he was 21.

Crazy Days

I was walking to work yesterday, and bumped into one of the guys I work with. He's very English, with a fabulous accent, and we were discussing the hectic day ahead of us (a tight deadline and a mountain of work to get through), and he said that his dread and trepidation brought to mind a Dylan Thomas poem -- which he proceeded to quote to me in full! It's quite lovely, and it's about, broadly, how no matter how wild your dreams, they'll never match the madness of the day.

Here it is:

Awake, my sleeper, to the sun,
A worker in the morning town,
And leave the poppied pickthank where he lies;
The fences of the light are down,
All but the briskest riders thrown
And worlds hang on the trees.

(From 'When Once the Twilight Locks No Longer', Dylan Thomas. See the whole poem at poem hunter)

Reading

I've almost finished the third book in this brilliant trilogy, "His Dark Materials," by Philip Pullman. I'm completely hooked!

Pre-Dublin Poetry

I'm going to Dublin this weekend. Very excited!

TO AN ISLE IN THE WATER

Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart.

She carries in the dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.

She carries in the candles,
And lights the curtained room,
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;

And shy as a rabbit,
Helpful and shy.
To an isle in the water
With her would I fly.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

(via poetry-archive)

Recent Reads

Powerful, thrilling, and moving. It's about pushing yourself to the limit to feel the ultimate rush; the danger in going so far for one moment of bliss or release. I've actually never read any Tim Winton before, and I'm now excited to make my way through his back catalog. Reviews etc are here.

Another intense and powerful read, about a man who designs for himself the perfect, American-dream life, only for it to be shattered by the transformation of his daughter and an event that he finds difficult to understand. It is completely compelling, energetic, and fascinating. I enjoyed it a lot. It is part of a trio of books by Roth. I've read The Human Stain, and the other novel in the series, I Married A Communist, is on my bookshelf waiting for some attention.