September round up

Having settled back at home for a while, I have finished a few books but not posted about them.
Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is the story of Rose Edelstein who discovers aged nine that she is able to taste feelings and emotions in food, that is the feelings of those who made the food. This is first revealed when she tastes a slice of lemon cake made by her mother, and is almost overwhelmed by the sadness she felt which her mother was experiencing when she made the cake. The descriptions of the various foods that Rose eats and her response to the emotions revealed in their taste are numerous, and eventually leads her to rely on food which is , as they say, untouched by human hand, although even this food reveals  its origins to Rose. Her family although apparently an average American one, are rather detached from each other, and become increasingly so as Rose grows up. This is a beautifully written story, so much so that its writing almost hides the strange bleakness of Rose's family life. For me, there were some resonances of Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Travellers Wife, which I found a really intriguing and memorable read.
Heather Gudenkauf's debut novel, The Weight of Silence, is written from several points of view. Calli is seven years old and selectively mute, but also very bright. One morning she and her best friend Petra disappear. The story of what exactly happened that day, the lead up to it and the consequences for both families and others involved in the events is told by Call's mother, Toni, her brother Ben, Petra's father and the local sheriff, a former boyfriend of Toni's. Calli's voice is the only one we don't hear. The others are all written in the first person, using the present tense, which gives a more intensely dramatic effect, while what happens to Calli and what she is thinking are written in the third person and past tense. An interesting and successful debut novel.
One classic story I had never read was William Thackeray's Vanity Fair. This was a Book Club read, so the discussion was fairly wide ranging, from the humour of the names ( Lady Bareacres), to how sympathetic we felt towards Becky Sharpe, and also to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and thence to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament of the Bible. Several of the group had read it before, mostly as teenagers and felt that on re-reading it, their opinion of Becky had changed radically. I found it an easy read, humorous despite the tragedies that happened to the characters, and it left me wondering just how much human behaviour hadn't changed at all in 150 years. Most of the group enjoyed the story, even those who hadn't finished reading it.
Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind is an essay on what affects mountains have had on human imagination. From a history of how we came to view mountains as adventurous places to go , instead of being avoided, to descriptions of Mallory and Irvine's attempts to climb Everest, and how that mountain was discovered and eventually measured, the beautiful descriptions of glaciers, mountains and people carried my imagination along. I read my copy on Kindle, bought as an offer earlier, together with his The Wild places, which I read some time ago.

A bird in the chimney

Picture from Google images

Back home from France late Saturday evening, on Sunday morning I heard strange rustling noises in the kitchen. Eventually realised they were coming from the kitchen chimney, just behind the boiler and it was a bird of some sort. After a snack lunch and mowing the rather long grass in both front and back gardens, DH ( Dear Husband) decided to investigate, which meant clearing all the cookery books from the kitchen mantelpiece first. Finally the bird more or less fell out of the chimney ( there is a small opening, usually closed by a sliding piece of metal), flew to the other side of the kitchen and then out of the window which we had left open. The bird was a collared dove, who often inhabit our garden, along with lots of plump wood pigeons. The kitchen needed a good clean after that,  just what was needed after returning from a trip away.

A Day Out

The plateau de Trizac

For a change, and as the weather looked fairly promising yesterday, we took a trip out, first going up to the Col d'Aulac and exploring some of the tracks up on the Plateau de Trizac. The tracks are unmade up and lead nowhere but to the summer pastures for cattle.. The Grand Randonnee 4 and offshoots from it cross part of the area, and the whole area is a popular with hikers and ramblers, especially in the spring and summer. ( video of a hike here)The pastures are dotted with wild flowers still, though not so obviously as in spring. There are also the remains of burons, the former cheese- making places, where in the past, men lived for the summer, milking the cows and making the cheeses for which the Cantal is still well-known. A very few are still active, some have been restored and put to other uses, such as a restaurant, or a gite, but most have been simply left and are falling into ruins.
From the plateau, we rejoined the road to Trizac, and then continued to Saignes, described in the Michelin Green for the Auvergne Rhone Valley as a summer resort. It is in a very pretty setting, in the valley of the Sumene river (which joins the nearby Dordogne) and is surrounded by gently rolling hills, yet it is not far to the Monts de Cantal. There are a few pleasant looking brasseries for meals and some attractive shops,  and an intriguing-looking chapel perched on a small hill, but is a very quiet place.  We plan to visit again another time.

Planting a cross

On Sunday last, this cross was put up, to replace an older one, now disappeared, which apparently commemorated an English parachutist who landed in the area during the Second World War. It is called Le Croix de l'Angle, and adds another cross on the skyline of the vallee du Mars. The cross is simply made of wood and cemented into a group of rocks. After everyone had driven up to the plateau, then walked down to the place where the cross had  been planted, all returned down to the village salle polyvalente for a simple lunch, provided by M Joncoux, the proprietor of the land on which the cross stands. Many of those who went up to see the cross were fairly elderly,  ( a few I know are well into their eighties) but found no trouble in walking up and down the steep rough ground to get to the site of the cross. Lunch was a basic meal of dried ham and sausage, followed by aligot, then cheese and finally fruit tart, made by the ladies of the village. The weather was good, fortunately, sunny but quite windy up on the montagne. The original plan was to have had lunch up on the mountain, but the coolness and strength of the wind thankfully put paid to that idea.

Auvergne summer

Summer came to the Auvergne in August and it was very, very hot, up into the 30's Centigrade. We drove down on a hot, sunny day and it got hotter and hotter. No one moved much, as moving seemed not worth the effort. People sat under trees for shade and to try and catch any little breeze that was available. The late evenings were full of people in the village sitting outside their houses, chatting with friends and families in the cooler darkness. The weather was perfect for the kermesse held in mid-August, with a church service for St Ferreol, followed by a sale of home made patisserie, and a fete with a lottery(3 tickets for 10euros), in which I won a voucher for 20euros worth of flowers,(winnings shown above) then a meal for everyone, with bread and patisserie made by members of the local hunt ( la Chasse) who used a bread oven belonging to people who have a house overlooking the village.
A couple of weekends later , the village held its final Marche du pays, an evening event when local vendors of sausages, aligot (an Auvergnat speciality, recipe here) omelettes, bourriols ( a type of local pancake made with buckwheat flour) and local Auvergne wines and soft drinks. Everyone buys a bit of what they fancy and sits down at long tables and benches in front of the Mairie and eats and chats, generally socialising with friends and relatives. There are usually a small group of musicians playing local music on the bagpipes and accordian, to add to the gaiety.



Our latest outing was a coach trip to the national Museum of the Resistance, followed by lunch on a boat which started  and ended its trip on the Truyere river just beneath the Viaduc de Garabit. Lunch was a four course meal, with a starter of salad, pate de foie gras, then duck leg and vegetables, followed by cheese and either apple tart or ice cream, and finally coffee. A long day which began with the coach party leaving at 6.30am, before sunrise, which we watched as the coach made its way to Mont Mouchet, with a short pause for a coffee just as we went on to the A75. The site is interesting, with a monument, walks in the surrounding forests, and a well-laid out and informative small museum.

The visit to the Garabit Viaduct, built by Eiffel,was interesting, as at  the end of the trip, the boat went almost right underneath it, perfect for taking photographs. We finished our day out with an hour's stop in St Flour, in the old town, and paid a brief visit to the cathedral, before having a quick coffee on our way back to the coach. A grand if somewhat tiring day out.

Summer reads

I recently re-read Jane Gardam's Old Filth for a book club meeting, swiftly followed by The Man in the Wooden Hat. I first read Old Filth about 4 years ago and thought it a wonderful read. I enjoyed The Man in the Wooden Hat just as much, as it did give further enlightenment about the central relationships in Old Filth. Discussing Old Filth without revealing what happens in the next book was a bit complicated, as many of the others in the group had not read it, although one or two had, and I don't like to give away the plot when talking to people who haven't read a book under discussion, unless perhaps they have no intention of reading it.
I have a certain sympathy with Edward Feathers, sent home to England from his Malayan childhood, even though that childhood was very deprived, as I too was sent to a boarding school in England, while my parents were working in West Africa. But Old Filth, as he is usually referred to, had no mother and was ignored by his shell-shocked father ; the aunts to whom he was ostensibly sent merely passed him on to a couple who were cruel and uncaring of the children in their home. Old Filth's first school seemed to be the saving of him, as the headmaster cared deeply for the boys in his charge. Edward makes friends with another boy, Pat Ingoldby and becomes almost adopted into his family, spending many holidays with them, until the outbreak of the Second World War. His experiences during this event varied from the horrendous to the faintly ridiculous and obviously marked him for life and affected his relationship with his wife.
Although I had read Old Filth a few years ago, I seemed to have forgotten some of the details of the story, so was glad to re-read it - as a general rule, I don't do a lot of re-reading, even though it can bring out much more of a book than a first or second read can.
Another re-read was Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, last read, I think, was as a youngish child. Again, I obviously recalled some of the main characters, both human and horse, and several incidents, but I had forgotten quite how didactic in tone this story is, both about human behaviour to animals and also to each other. It is still a perfectly readable account of a horse's life and is still a suitable read for a child.

Ann Tyler

Ann Tyler's Ladder of Years was a recent Book Club read.. Billed on the cover of my edition (bought new) was "her best book yet", Since this title was published in1996 and she has written several more books, all well -received by critics, this comment is merely publishers hype. It was a good read, though, and a good introduction to Ann Tyler for me, as I've yet to read more of her work. The story is centred on Delia, youngest of thee daughters of a Baltimore doctor. She starts a relationship with Adrian Bly-Brice, despite having been married to her father's successor for many years, and later, while on the annual family holiday at the seaside, Delia starts walking along the beach and just carries on, leaving children and husband behind. After being given a lift by a young man in a borrowed vehicle, Delia ends up in a small town, where she finds herself  a room and a job, and begins to do things she has never done alone before, such as eating a proper meal in a proper restaurant.
Delia is having difficulty with her children, who are growing up and leaving home, a stage of life which she had never actually gone through, as her husband took over the family home as well as the doctor's practise, and her father remained in the house until his fairly recent death, as has one of her sisters. Delia's emotional difficulties were a rich source of our discussion of this book, and caused many to think about exactly how independent we were as modern women. I look forward to reading many other titles by Ann Tyler.