In One Person

I was very lucky to get a ticket to see my favourite author John Irving this week at a literary event in Toronto.  He was here to talk about his new novel, "In One Person".  This is his 13th novel and as he says it is his fourth political one, in the sense that it deals with an issue that people will undoubtedly take sides on.  This story is about having crushes on the people that one shouldn't have crushes on.  It features love between transgendered and bisexuals.  I have just this morning started the novel and I just love the way John Irving writes, you can tell that this is going to be a story that takes the main character to places that are going to be hard to read about.  Irving talked at length about the craft of novel writing and told how he always has the ending of a story first, often the last line and then the rest of the story will unfold from there.  Often, he has several of these story endings waiting in the wings for their turn to emerge.  He talked about his influences, when he was younger definitely, Dickens and Melville.  He revealed how he does not think a story worth telling unless there is an element that will be painful for the reader because it involves something that you would not want to happen to you or anyone you love.  His protagonists are usually searching for some meaning or knowledge and the reader is always aware of the answer before the character finds it for himself. 
Irving compared his other love, wrestling with his love of writing.  He feels that in both cases he enjoys the process of perfecting the skills over the result and that is what compels him to keep doing it.  He says the pleasure comes in doing something well but you have to put in the work to get to that stage.  At the end of the evening John Irving was very generous in answering questions that the audience had put to him.  He was very funny and smart when he answered and seems a very down to earth approachable man.  He talked very proudly of his youngest son Everett, who was in the audience and it was to him that he gave consideration when he writing this novel as this son is gay.  He finally admitted that he is working on his 14th novel, and that the ending came to him on Christmas Eve, he would not say what it is going to be about, but he did give us the last line.  It had something to do with being on a collision course (did not write it down!), but as he said that could apply to most of his novels. Can't wait!

50 shades of grey and a splash of colour

Well, just for something different I am going to write about what I have been reading.  Just over a week ago I finished the novel, The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan, I believe this was a first published book for this author and I would say it was a pretty good start.  It is a story about a young wife who on leaving New York with her new husband, on an ocean liner bound for Europe, finds herself on an ill fated journey at sea.  The liner, like the Titanic and at about the time of that ship's fatal journey, finds itself sinking.  The young woman, Grace, along with 30 or so others, manage to secure a place on a lifeboat and then they  must endure life in this lifeboat until they are rescued.  Quickly, a leader emerges, Hardie, a crew member who has knowledge of life at sea. Not all the choices the survivors have to make are popular. I found this story very well written,it is not just a story about what happens in the lifeboat but it follows on to deal with the aftermath and the consequences of one of the decisions that Grace had become involved in while in the lifeboat.

Now in the interests of research, I thought I ought to check out the first in the trilogy of books by EL James, 'Fifty shades of Grey'.  It is not a book I would normally be interested in, I thought it sounded as if it was going to be a bit Mills and Boon, a lightweight romance.  However, as all three of the books are leading the best seller lists I thought I would give one a try. Also, someone in my play reading class told me that apparently it is very popular as a book club choice, so maybe there was more to it than I first thought.  Well, I started it three days ago, and I am reading it on my ipad (thank goodness, so nobody can see the cover) and it runs at about 700 pages on my device, and I think I am almost half way through this morning.  Yes, I can hardly put the thing down.  For anybody who has been sleeping up a tree, and that was me until about 5 days ago.  This book is particularly targeted at women and apparently what women like to read about is sex, and not just 'vanilla sex' as the male protagonist says but the kind of kinky sex that at one time was thought only to be of interest to male consumers.  I think the interesting point is here, that women do like to read about this stuff, and especially read about it as opposed to viewing it, I would be very surprised if it would do as well on the screen.  It is of course pure fantasy and I can just imagine that all sorts of women from all stages in their lives are escaping their everyday lives while they delve into these books that come with no literary pretencions. In fact, I may just have to read the other two and report back of course.

Catchin' Up with what I have been doing

I have had lots of things taking up my time lately so have not been so keen to sit at my computer to write this.  I am now back into taking classes; watercolour painting, drawing, bridge, photography and my latest and newest endeavour play reading.  Play Reading is so much fun!  We are a group of about 20 people who enjoy theatre, and we sit around and take turns to read aloud the parts in a play, a different one each week.  It is a great way to enjoy plays that you wouldn't always get to see and is a lot easier than actually trying to perform them, which I would probably never do anyway.  I think it is a nice change from the general book club idea, which I must admit I am a little bored with.

I have not been neglecting going to see shows, this month I have seem some excellent performances.  At our local college, Sheridan, I saw their rendition of the musical Sweeney Todd, the students in the theatre arts program at Sheridan are so good, as good as anything I have seen in Toronto, or in London or New York for that matter!   Then I saw War Horse at the Mirvish in Toronto, I think this was better than the film version.  The life size horse puppets are amazing and all round it was a very clever and moving show.  Next up, was another performance put on by the National Theatre in London, (I adore this theatre) This time I saw the encore performance of "One Man, two guvnor's" which was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time, I would say it is my favourite from the National so far.  This show is going to be on in New York this summer, so if anyone reading this will be there do try and get tickets, but good luck because in London it was sold out all the time.  Finally, on a recent UK trip I saw Hayfever at the Noel Coward theatre, with Lyndsey Duncan and Jeremy Northam, this was no so good.  I do not know if it was because the play is not really so relevant now or the humour was just not working, but I found it slow and a bit of a disappointment.  Shame. 

I do not have any films to mention at the moment, a bit of a slow time for films right now. However, I have been catching up on a few TV to DVD series and some were well worth mentioning.  Two BBC productions that I really enjoyed were the new adaptation of 'Great Expectations' starring Gillian Anderson as Miss Havesham, of course this is where the BBC outdo everyone else when it comes to adapting great novels for the screen.  The other BBC mini series,  is 'Birdsong' an adaptation of the novel by Sebastian Faulks.  This is about a love affair between a young British officer in WWI who had fallen for a beautiful married French women and in true dramatic form their love is destined not to survive.  It is beautifully filmed, and terribly sad, but get yourself a big glass of wine, some sweeties, and hankies and settle down to enjoy.