The last Last Word

The fantastic thing about these monologues has been the way in which each one is so different from the other two. The final one, A bit of Private Business, stars Bob Hoskins as a hitman waiting in a public toilet for his next target. Hoskins is so good at this sort of thing, and his comic timing is pretty much impeccable, making much of this monologue very funny indeed. But, in keeping with the other two, things eventually turn a bit darker...the man finds himself meditating on age, loneliness, and the feeling of a world moving on while some people get left behind, and the end of the piece is so surprising that it takes a little while for you to realise how significant it is - the hitman has outlined for us the black-and-white rules and principles of his world, but ultimately we see that, tragically, the things he believes in cannot be trusted any longer.

In summary, these monologues by Hugo Blick have been really quite excellent. Managing to balance comedy and tragedy is a tricky one, but each piece has done it, brilliantly.

The Last Word...again

I was wrong, it seems - the monologues are about imminent death, but not necessarily the death of the narrator, as in the first one; in the second one, Six days one June, it is the mother of the storyteller who is on the verge of dying. This one is very unsettling, about a forty-year-old farmer called Huw (played by Rhys Ifans, the master-portrayar of tortured souls) narrating what, at first, appears to be a Lonely-Hearts-type advert, but ultimately becomes a sort of confessional video diary as his story turns darker. Ifans manages to make the character both horrific and pathetic in equal measure; it's a very subtle, mesmerising performance that makes Huw's inevitable breakdown horribly enthralling, as he obsessively washes his face and gives way to wracking sobs.

Brrrr...not comfortable viewing! But thoughtprovoking enough to make it worth a watch.

The Last Word

This post's title isn't a way of saying I'm not going to blog anymore - au contraire, this in fact marks my long-overdue return to blogging after several months of silence! It really refers to a mini-series of thirty-minute dramas that recently aired on BBC One called The Last Word Monologues, thus named because they each feature a character on the verge of dying. I've only watched the first one, but it was so excellent that I thought I'd blog before I watch the other two.

Subtitled Before I call you in, this monologue had Sheila Hancock playing a woman with an untreatable illness recording her last message to her husband before her death. There were lots of snide reviews and comments in the press about Hancock's "stagey" performance, or the "unnatural" script, but I just found it incredibly poignant and beautiful. This is largely due to Hancock's masterfully restrained performance - she's always been known for her ability to do raw emotion effectively, and this is a perfect vehicle for her talents - but credit must go to the writer and director, Hugo Blick, too, as the interchange of anecdotes and reflection is very well-judged. The best bit, for me, is when the woman urges her husband to remarry within a year; this is when Hancock is at her best, gazing straight into the camera with tears in her eyes, blazing with sheer emotion.

Quick, get it on iPlayer before it goes!

The Mistletoe Bough

A slightly random post, but this is a fantastic Victorian ballad by Thomas Haynes Bailey that my friend Felix has set to music and it is so wonderfully melodramatic and gruesome that I wanted to share it with everyone!

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.
The Baron's retainers were blithe and gay,
Keeping the Christmas holiday.
The Baron beheld with a father's pride
His beautiful child, Lord Lovell's bride.
And she, with her bright eyes seemed to be
The star of that goodly company.

"I'm weary of dancing, now," she cried;
"Here, tarry a moment, I'll hide, I'll hide,
And, Lovell, be sure you're the first to trace
The clue to my secret hiding place."
Away she ran, and her friends began
Each tower to search and each nook to scan.
And young Lovell cried, "Oh, where do you hide?
I'm lonesome without you, my own fair bride."

They sought her that night, they sought her next day,
They sought her in vain when a week passed away.
In the highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot,
Young Lovell sought wildly, but found her not.
The years passed by and their brief at last
Was told as a sorrowful tale long past.
When Lovell appeared, all the children cried,
"See the old man weeps for his fairy bride."

At length, an old chest that had long laid hid
Was found in the castle; they raised the lid.
A skeleton form lay mouldering there
In the bridal wreath of that lady fair.
How sad the day when in sportive jest
She hid from her lord in the old oak chest,
It closed with a spring and a dreadful doom,
And the bride lay clasped in a living tomb.

Sarah Edwards's Sovereign God

I've already mentioned that I'm reading The Pleasures of God by John Piper at the moment - towards the end of chapter two he deals with the whole question of God's sovereignty over all events, particularly in terms of how we cope with tragedy and loss knowing that even the saddest moments of life are still within God's plan and purposes. He quotes a letter written by Sarah Edwards (wife of the theologian Jonathan Edwards) to her daughter Esther, upon being told that Jonathan had died after contracting smallpox:

What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. O that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness, that we had [Jonathan] so long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us! We are all given to God; and there I am, and love to be.

It is Clarissa, he said.

So, on Friday morning I finished Mrs Dalloway...

My goodness me. I can't even begin to describe what it's like, it is so utterly unique out of all the books I have read. With every page, the depiction of the characters becomes richer and richer and, as the various streams of consciousness chase each other through the overall narrative, every thought is so poignant; the insignificant, tragic, beautiful stories of incredibly real people became shockingly powerful. Virginia Woolf suffered from mental problems throughout virtually the whole of her life, and I think that contributed to how perceptively she was able to depict and understand people; surely, at the very least, it must have informed her portrayal of Septimus Warren Smith, one of the book's most heartbreaking figures, going quietly and willingly mad from shellshock as his desperate wife tries to help him somehow.

There is so much wit here, too, but almost always in a brutal way - one of the most pathetic characters, Miss Killman, is enjoying an internal tirade against Clarissa Dalloway, whom she despises, when the cringeworthy comment is inserted (she herself when alone in the evening found comfort in a violin; but the sound was excruciating; she had no ear) - we already loathe Miss Killman, but this extra bit of information damns her even further.

All in all, it's a breathtaking read, and one to which I am sure I will return continually through my life. It's a mark of how much I loved it that it has now appeared on my "Favourite Books" list on Facebook (!) - joining such masterpieces as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Gormenghast and The Book Thief.

"Peter! Peter!" cried Clarissa, following him out on to the landing. "My party! Remember my party tonight!" she cried, having to raise her voice against the roar of the open air, and, overwhelmed by the traffic and the sound of all the clocks striking, her voice crying "Remember my party tonight!" sounded frail and thin and very far away as Peter Walsh shut the door.

Many books

Ach it has been a while since last I posted: life has been a bit mental of late so I have been neglecting my blogging. However, I have had many hours of travelling time so have done lots of reading, Hurrah! So here is a bit of an update on my literary journeys.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I bought this on a bit of a whim in a second-hand bookshop in York, it was a beautiful two volume set which cried out to be purchased! Read the first volume over about a month and it was fantastic - the prose is quite dense so does require a fair bit of mental commitment, but the characters are so well drawn that you get lost in it very quickly. Tolstoy's grasp of human nature is extraordinary - each of his Russian aristocrats have their emotions, desires and fears sketched out masterfully, and the reader gradually realises that the one thing they have in common is a dissatisfaction with their own lives. Only one man, Levin, begins to grasp where he might find fulfilment and this occurs when he takes to the fields with his peasant employees and works alongside them in their labours - this brings home to him the complete emptiness of the lives of his wealthy friends. What Tolstoy conveys brilliantly is the inevitability of each character's destiny, as a result of their actions - Chapter 22 of Part 2 has a very sobering paragraph when two of the main characters (who are having an affair) come to realise where this course of events will take them, signified by the their awkwardness around the woman's son: The sensation he aroused [in them both] might be compared to that of a seafarer who can see by the compass that his vessel is drifting away in the wrong direction and that he is powerless to stop it. Every moment sees him getting farther and farther, with nothing but ruin before him. The child was the compass that showed them what they knew only too well, but refused to recognise. Am anxious to get stuck into the second volume but I will leave it a while.

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith - This author is, of course, best known for his books about Precious Ramotswe, the No. 1 Ladies Detective - I do love those books, but prefer his lesser-known series about Isabel Dalhousie, professional philosopher and part-time sleuth, who lives in Edinburgh. This particular book is the second in the series, and it is simply marvellous - Isabel is a brilliant viewpoint character, meditating wittily on every event of life, and the ingenious plots rattle along at an excellent pace, making the books impossible to put down.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - This is my current one, I'm only about thirty pages in but am already enchanted. Woolf's style of writing is incredible - basically one long stream of consciousness containing all of Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts on one particular day - and you emerge from the book feeling like you've inhaled some sort of heady incense. More on this once I've finished it...

The Pleasures of God by John Piper - I've been reading this for a while, in partnership with my friend Sam; again, it requires a lot of concentration but I'm trying hard to really engage with what the author says, and evaluate his points. The basic premise is to expound upon the things in which God takes delight, as shown by the Bible: chapter one deals with God's pleasure in His Son, while chapter two considers His pleasure in His works. It's all very thought-provoking, the margins are slowly filling up with my pencil annotations!

That's it for now! Lots of good stuff, although a little bit tiring to read...I think I need a reliable murder mystery to be the next novel!