Recommendations for Your Christmas Bookshelf
December 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
My fellow insects,
As this will be my Christmas offering to you, I am going to review three books each one of which would make a wonderful present. I believe that a book is such a good present, as it gives both the pleasure of reading to and excites the imagination of, the receiver. Here you have fiction, a memoir and historical fiction.
Imagining Don Giovanni by Anthony Rudel
This is a delightful book not just for those of you that appreciate classical music. This is a wonderful love story full of [passion and drama concerning the composition of the opera Don Giovanni. Knowing, as we do from papers, that Casanova was in Prague at the time that Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte were working on the opera Don Giovanni which was to be based on the scandalous life of Don Juan, Anthony Rudel, son of the famous conductor Julius Rudel, has written an excellent piece of historical fiction.
At the time, Mozart was having a little trouble with the cast of Don Giovanni and their interpretation of the love affairs as portrayed by his music and the words of Da Ponte. It took one of the world’s greatest lovers (if history is to be believed!) to go on stage during the rehearsals and demonstrate how to act out love and passion for your fellow actors. There are some wonderful scenes in this book when Casanova is teaching the actors, at the same time we are treated to Mozart’s strong feelings and longing to be with his wife, Costanze, and family back in Vienna.
This is a story full of passion for other human beings, music and the theatre; it is a marvelous piece of fiction based on fact from which a lot can be learnt and a lot imagined.
The Greek for Love by James Chatto
This is a memoir with a difference. James Chatto is an Englishman who fell in love with a Canadian, Wendy Martin, who became his wife, but not before a passionate and, at times, melancholy love affair takes place starting one summer many years ago on the island of Corfu. You may well have read some of Chatto’s writings in Canadian magazines and newspapers, as he and his family have lived for some time in Toronto as well as on Corfu.
James and Wendy were captivated by the way they were accepted so readily by the locals once they had bought and renovated a ruined house on Corfu, amongst the olive trees and grape vines. The way they did this is very different from certain other stories based in the south of France. They were on Corfu at a time when they could swim naked off a deserted beach which now is surrounded by villas and bijou hotels. The more they learned Greek, the more they enjoyed the social life of the local village and particularly the stories and myths as told by and about the locals on balmy evenings at a table outside the local taverna, where there was always much laughter and plenty of local wine. There are descriptions of wonderful meals (Chatto has published several cook books) of fresh sardines, lamb as only the Greeks know how to cook it and fresh fruit from the surrounding trees.
It isn’t until near the end of the book that a tragedy occurs that brought tears to my eyes for the first time in many, many years of reading all different types of books. Tragic as this part of the book is, it in no way detracts from this wonderful story; indeed, it gives one tremendous faith in human kind and the ability of all of us to survive unwanted and unwarranted tragedies in our lives. This is a delightful memoir, superbly narrated, funny, imaginative and very, very readable.
Angel’s Game by Carlos Zafon
For those of you who haven’t read any Zafon, give yourselves an early Christmas present and go and buy a second hand copy of Shadow of the Wind by Zafon, you will love it. Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a very well known Spanish writer of historical fiction in Europe and has been translated into about 40 languages. As a historian, there is much that can be learnt in a most pleasant way from reading his books.
Angel’s Game is another of Zafon’s books translated by Lucia Graves, Robert Graves’s daughter, and it is this translation that makes for such a fine book for those of us reading it in English – unlike certain other Spanish writings which have been translated using modern idioms even in 18th century dialogue.
This is the story of a young man, David Martin, who lives in a dark and mysterious house in the centre of Barcelona and spends his time writing cheap and gaudy novels under a pseudonym. He is visited by a French editor who decides to make him an offer. If he will write a most extraordinary book, the like of which has never been seen before, he, the French editor will give David Martin a fortune to do with as he pleases. The house itself features strongly in this story because of its previous owner whose personal belongings are still to be found in a locked room at the back of the haunting house.
Needless to say, not everything is as it seems in this gothic universe of romance, tragedy and mystery all surrounding the passion of books. This is a masterful story and, yes, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books does appear again in this intriguing and well written book.
I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas and good chewing amongst the pages as well as at the festive table. Here’s to 2010!
The Booklouse.
