Book review: The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things is a biography with a difference, in which author Paula Bryne investigates the life and personality of one of the world’s most popular authors through the ‘small things’ that make up every life; letters, portraits, scrawls and childhood notebooks. Starting with an everyday object that may or may not have belonged to the Austen family, Bryne expands on its relevance to Jane and her life, using historical evidence and Austen’s own novels to discuss what we know about Jane Austen and what we think we know. What emerges is a portrait of knowledgeable and free-thinking woman who was determined from a young age to be a published author and worked tirelessly to refine her art.

Bryne suffers as all Austen biographers do from a lack of evidence regarding Austen’s personal life. Of the thousands of letters she must have written in her lifetime, only a couple of hundred survive. We are fortunate that she was a published author in her lifetime otherwise even these and the few letters sent to her by family and friends might well have been consigned to the rubbish or fire.

Nevertheless, on the available evidence Bryne shows that the spinster daughter of a Georgian village clergyman knows more about the human condition than one might at first think. Rather than being sheltered and borderline reclusive as some imagine her, Austen had an extensive web of social contacts throughout the country and was very active socially, travelling around the country to visit family and friends and see the sights of cities such as London and Bath as well as small towns and villages. This network of individuals from country neighbours and landed gentry, was littered with delightful and extravagant personalities, some with life-stories stranger than fiction that must have provided grist for Austen’s literary mill. No one who writes social satire with the cutting wit and comedic flair of Austen could have lived all her life in amongst the same 30 people in quiet Southern England.

 Jane Austen. 

To take as an example chapter 12, in which Bryne’s discusses the hottest political topic of Austen’s day; the slave trade. The ‘small thing’ is a portrait of two beautiful young women; one white, one black. The portrait is entitled 'The Daughters of Mansfield' and the two girls are not the child of gentry and her maid as one might assume for the period, but adopted daughters of Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice who made monumental rulings on the rights of slaves. Austen was herself a staunch abolitionist. In her wide connections she knew several families who profited from the slave trade, owned or grew up in plantations in the Indies and her brothers in the Royal Navy held up slave ships as part of their national duty. She was knowledgeable and passionate on the topic, as we can see in Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price’s extensive reading and quoting of abolitionist writers Thomas Clarkson and Dr Johnson and of course in her vitriolic treatment of any of her characters bound up in the slave trade.

'Daughters of Mansfield'

Like all of her novels, Mansfield Park is full of nuances and references that would be lost on modern readers. The name of the house, built on the profits of slaving, is an ironic reference to the Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. Mrs Norris, the horrendous bullying aunt in the same novel and one of Austen’s most repulsive characters, could be named for Robert Norris, who promised to serve the abolitionist cause but spoke against it in parliament.

Frances O'Conner as Fanny Price in the 1999 film adaptation of Mansfield Park.

 
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things also provides fascinating insights in to Georgian England. In chapter2 The Indian Shawl, Bryne examines Austen’s knowledge of and relations in Britain’s colonies, most importantly India. As well as merchants and seaman, Austen had a vivacious

Five for Friday

Check out Trending City for all the amazing things happening in cool cities all over the world. Brisbane included!

I know a lot of friends who will understand this; We could all do with a little less 'busy' by Fat Mum Slim.

30 saddest endings in literature. Warning: contains HUGE spoilers. Obviously.

A shout out to our nation's capital which celebrated its' century this week.

And finally, a video to make you smile.  

Movie review: Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is one of those impossible-to-film books. As a piece of 700-page intense literature, the themes are too intense, the characters too verbose, the scene changes dramatic and the characters and plot lines too long and intertwined to be made comprehensible in just 2 hours. (Read what I thought of Anna Karenina in this blog post)

Fortunately, the makers of the latest film version have not even tried to fit the book into a film. What they have done instead is slice the narrative down to every individual dramatic event and leave nothing else. They have cut out all unnecessary words, themes, segways, diversions and focussed entirely on three love stories and the life and ‘lot’ of aristocratic women in late 19^th century Russia.

Furthermore, rather than create extravagant sets for the drawing rooms and streets of St Petersburg, all of the action that takes place in an old, disused theatre. It is clear that this is a not a faithful Anna Karenina but the tale of Anna Karenina. The sets slide and glide and the characters wander freely through the rigging and across the stage, moving from office to restaurant to ice rink.  Difficult to accept at first, it works so beautifully as a device to speed the story along and also to make it clear to the audience how false and misleading is the life of a socialite. Constantin Levin, played by Domhnall Gleeson, is the most real and grounded of all the main characters so he alone is allowed to venture off the stage sets and out into the Russian landscape.

 The film benefits from a cast of bit-characters played by actors such as Ruth Wilson and Shirley Henderson.

Anna Karenina the novel is about so much more than the title character, but in the film, her tragic love story with Vronsky is the key plot and almost every moment in the book is played out in full tear-jerking-glad-its-not-me detail.

 Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson making all the wrong decisions.

Movie review: Great Expectations

Most of us have an idea of the general plot of Great Expectations, having being forced to read it at some point in our high-school-English years. Boy named Pip lives with his sister and her husband. A convict named Magwitch, escaped from a prison ship, happens upon Pip and persuades him to assist with his escape. At around the same time, the local landowner, the mad recluse Miss Haversham takes a liking to Pip and arranges for him to regularly visit her and her adopted daughter Estella, who is as proud and cold as she is beautiful.

Many years later, Pip comes into a mysterious fortune – the ‘great expectations’ of the title – and goes off to become a gentleman in London. He fritters away his cash without thought or plan, dragging others down with him and losing sight of the places and the people he came from. The eventual revealment of his mysterious benefactor and the resolution of the convoluted relationships breaks down what little Pip thought he knew of the world, but he finds a sort of redemption through the forgiveness of others.

 

This latest adaptation is a BBC production with the accompanying top-level British acting talent to match. Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch the convict, Helena Bonham Carter as the disappointed and vindictive Miss Haversham fits like a glove and Robbie Coltrane as the entangled and conniving solicitor Jaggers are the leads to the smattering of familiar faces that make up the cast.

Ralph Fiennes as Abel Magwitch

As with any adaptation of classic, lengthy literature, a lot of the plot is left out or compounded. Personally, I think that in the case of Great Expectations this can only improve what was an unnecessarily drawn-out novel, issued as it was by Dickens as chapter-length installments in a magazine he wrote and published. A movie is a cut-to-the-bone version of the story and for me, this makes the interminable morbidity and accent-indulgent works of Dickens vastly improved.

Along with cutting down, the movie-makers have taken great liberties with the plot, speeding up the action and doling out endings as they see fit. I understand that changes need to be made to transform a book into a film, but in this case certain lines of literary decency were definitely crossed. If I were a Dickens admirer I would likely be horrified, as I am at overly spliced adaptations of Jane Austin.

As with almost all recent period pieces, the look of the film is stunning. The moors Pip is raised on are bleak and beautiful. Satis House and the great decaying wedding feast are a picture of despair, London is as dank and disease-ridden in which amongst the desperate and hateful characters, Pip's delightful friend Hubert Pocket (Olly Alexander) shines. He is one the few light, friendly characters in what is the usual Dickens dramatis personae of oily money money-grubbers, child-beaters and blackguards. 

 The decayed grandeur of Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham-Carter).

Five for Friday no. 57

Read about the Think, Eat, Save Campaign. 

 

Andrew Davies, the man who adapted the beloved 1996 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice is adapting War and Peace. Any other classic adaptation nerds out there excited by this one?

New bar opening on Caxton Street. For those of us who like to be a little bit classy pre-game. 

Vintage couples in love. Not sure I will ever get a couple-photo charming enough to be found in a list like this. 

And some website hilarity for my friend Sarah - You had one job to do.

Five for Friday no. 54

A small list of ways you can help with the flood recovery effort across Queensland:

• Donate to the Red Cross 
• Join the state-wide Mud Army 
• or register as a volunteer
• Check out the Queensland Government Emergency Services website for more information and updates. 

11 life lessons from Liz Lemon. 

This week is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, which is one of my favourite books ever. Here is a little look back on 200 years of book covers. I still cling to the 1995 BBC adaptation and have never seen the 2005 film adaption. The trailer made me nauseous.  

Mean Girls: the Musical is in development.

Image courtesy of Boo You Hodor. 

The Federal Election has been announced for 14 September 2013. That makes the campaign 227 days in length. Can we, as a collective nation, stand that much campaigning? I doubt it. But it does give me a link to share this photo of PM Julia Gillard, which she posted herself on twitter. I'm not a huge Gillard fan (though I loathe Tony Abbott) but I like seeing little things like this that are humanising of our politicians and public figures.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, one person's 16 reasons you shouldn't vote for Abbott.

Five for Friday no.49

Mash up of movie trailers for 2012.

12 enjoyable names for relatively common things.

Generation Y Expat (Why Not) travel blog for young professionals.

The worst words for 2012.

It's 200 years since the release of the first edition of the tales of the Brothers Grimm. 

Book review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Every so often when my boss and I discuss literature, she tells me that Anna Karenina is her favourite novel and is shocked and horrified that I have not read it. 'Magnificent', I believe, is her favourite word to describe the work.

Last month, spurred on partly by her recommendation and partly by the impending release of a movie adaptation, I borrowed the novel from my sister-in-law and knuckled down to read.

This is what I expected from Anna Karenina;

• Reading exhaustion. That feeling you get when you’re a third of the way through a book and you suddenly run out of steam or lose all interest but you have to keep going. For hundreds more pages.
• Confusion from the Russian names, which I cannot pronounce let alone remember.
• That it would take me months to read and I would most likely read 2 other books in between just to give myself a break.

None of that happened.

All that happened was I fell for this story utterly and completely. It is tremendous. It is at every turn of the page the epic Russian novel you think it will be. A host of characters flow in and out of the story, as Tolstoy deftly switched between storylines and points of view, bringing the reader in to see every angle and become acquainted with the thoughts and emotions of each unhappy individual.

For those who want the three sentence overview of the novel; Anna Karenina is set in the lives of the nobility in the last decades of grand imperial Russia. The titular protagonist is the social ideal of a perfect wife and mother until she meets and falls passionately in love with Count Vronsky. In abandoning her respectable life to be with him, she leaves behind her hated husband, her beloved son and her place in the world to be an outcast. Anna's story is interwoven with those of a host of family and friends whose stories run the breadth of the human experience.
 

Keira Knightly as Anna and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky.

Five for Friday no. 41

11 wonderful words with no English equivalent. For a language with so many words, I often feel that we miss out on these more interesting sentiments or shared experiences all wrapped up in one word. Courtesy of Jane.  

Cardboard bicycle close to mass-production.
 

Walk through a rain room.
 

The beautiful artwork of Helen Musselwhite.
 

The Look of Love by Helen Musselwhite. Image courtesy of her website. 

100 greatest non-fiction books, according to The Guardian. I have read exactly one of these books. But at least I have heard of most of them!

Book review: The Dinner by Herman Koch

The Dinner by Dutch author Herman Koch starts off with Paul and his wife Claire heading to dinner with Paul’s brother Serge and his wife Babette. Serge is tipped to be the next Prime Minister of The Netherlands, and there is no love lost between the brothers. Paul loathes the moulded baby-kissing politician his brother has become, Babette has committed herself to see her marriage through to the bitter end while Paul has the good fortune to have married Claire, the woman who is 'the reason for his happiness'. This uncomfortable dinner has been arranged so the parents can discuss the repercussions of a chilling act their children have committed.

This is a book about society and expectations, violence and retribution and the lengths people go to to do what is ‘right’ for their family.

What makes The Dinner so outstanding is the way in which Koch layers on details after details, slowly building tension as you, the reader, learn more about the couples, their children and their lives. Each twist and new revealment is subtle, believable, yet unexpected. You reach the end of each short chapter and you can’t stop yourself from flipping over the page. Not because there is some enticing cliff-hanger, but because you simply cannot wait to see what is going to happen next. Koch has divided the book according to the rituals of dinner; aperitif, entrée, dessert, lending the action a sense of heightened theatrical drama.

One of the reviews on the cover of the book describes The Dinner as ‘deliciously uncomfortable’, and that is exactly what it is. This is a disastrous dinner and a disastrous evening, and it is clearly going to be that way from the outset. As the reader, you revel in each horrible moment, even as they make you squirm.

What I particularly enjoyed about The Dinner is that none of the characters are cut-and-dry. You think you understand and sympathise with Paul and then you learn something about his past, or his attitude to his fellow men that makes you re-evaluate your opinion of him as a person. The obviously obnoxious and hateful brother to me became somewhat humanised and understandable. But it is the quiet and harmonious Claire who proves to be the most surprising and unsettling.

Koch had written a literary thriller without the overtness of a Hollywood action/thriller; more in a Hitchcock thriller kind of way, with the complexity of character and suggestion of tension in every chapter meaning that you simply cannot relax until you have devoured the book cover to cover. Even when I had put the book down, I sat and pondered the actions as they had been described and how I myself might have felt and acted in a similar scenario.

The Dinner is the sort of book you can pick up with your morning coffee and not put down until cocktail hour. It begs to be devoured in one day. Koch’s writing is descriptive, tense and engaging. Originally published in Koch’s native Netherlands in 2009 but only translated into English in 2012, it is an international best seller, and it is easy to see why. I look forward to more English translations of Koch's dark, satirical works.

Five for Friday no.25

Three of this week's five are fashionable collections:

Catherine Martin's art deco designer rug collection. I love it! I can't afford it!

Hermes collaborates with Japanese polaroid artist on a series of scarves.

Preview of a new Mimco collection - Pablo meets Coco.

Great literary spoilers. Sort of a guessing game - do you know what book they refer to? Warning! Here be spoilers!

In tribute to legendary writer and screenwriter Nora Ephron, who passed away this week, 5 things When Harry Met Sally taught us about relationships.

Five for Friday no. 21

On May 25, it was International Towel Day. A day to honour Douglas Adams, author or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and other pieces of marvellousness. In honour of their hero, Douglas Adams fans organise events all around the world and carry a towel with them for the day. Here are a list of 10 cult literary traditions.

Towel Day in Innsbruck, Austria.

Some sports that are over-due for a return to the Olympics. I vote for 'Duelling Pistols'


Texting your ex in 5 easy steps.


Google Doodles have an archive. It's pretty nifty.


Firework Fails!