inulro | [books 2013] March so far

12. Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O'Toole and Reed by Robert Sellers

I came to this as a dedicated Peter O'Toole fan girl, but there really wasn't much in here I didn't know about him already. The parts about Richard Burton were interesting, though. Or rather, I had no idea Liz Taylor was as big (and mean) a drunk as he was.

The tales of drunken exploits do, however, get pretty repetitive really soon. A lot of it is sad rather than funny (if you're me, I think you're supposed to find it all hilarious). There's really no insights. Probably wouldn't have finished if I hadn't been too unwell to read anything more challenging. And it's very short.

13.The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

This month's Bibliogoths book, but I didn't make it to the meeting. It was even my choice - I picked it because it's a classic ghost story and the archetypcal unreliable narrator book.

I didn't remember it being such hard going, but then I realised that I last read it around the time I was doing my MA, ie when I was still Properly Multilingual and spent my days reading things in French, Latin and Old English (and on very bad days German) and thus anything actually in English was light relief.

But James's prose is really, really difficult - it took me a while to work out that the unnamed governess spends entire chapters *saying nothing* and/or covering up for the fact that she hasn't a clue what she's doing with the children, and is in fact behaving pretty inappropriately (for the times) with them.

Also, I thought I knew it better than I did from having seen every film adaptation of it multiple times.

I did finish it in the end, it was a struggle but I think it was worth it.

14. Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (I can't be bothered to find the umlaut on the character map today).

The original Nordic detective novel. I was familiar with the story because Radio 4 dramatised all 10 Martin Beck stories not that long ago - I missed some, but caught this one. It's Sweden in the mid-1960s, and the body of a young women is found in a canal. The local police are unable to cope, so Martin Beck is sent from Stockholm to investigate.

It is very much the story of the police catching their killer by lots and lots of hard work. And without computers, mobile phones, etc. It's also very much the granddaddy of the Wallander series. Henning Mankell is by far the superior storyteller, but this is entertaining enough, and very short.