Great Japanese Railway Journeys – BBC 2

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  I was very pleased that, during the first episode of this new series, Michael Portillo got to visit Japan’s main toilet factory.  I am not in the habit of writing about toilets, and I’m certainly not in the habit of taking photos of hotel toilets and posting them all over Facebook and Whats App, but I did have to make an exception when I was lucky enough to go to Japan, where most of the toilets have heated seats and some of them play music.   They even have controls so that you can adjust the temperature of the seat to suit your own posterior.  It’s really quite an interesting experience – and Michael obviously thought so too!

And, being in Japan, he’s getting to travel on the wonderful shinkansen “bullet trains”.  Not only do they go super-fast, but all the seats face forwards (which is very important if, like me, you feel sick if you sit with your back to the engine) and there’s plenty of leg room.  (Don’t even get me started on the subject of HS2.)

Japan has a lot to offer.  Shame about the food.   But, of course, it’s more about the history than the technology (despite the excitement of the toilets), and Michael also spent some time visiting one of the main Shinto shrines in Kyoto.  Japan has a vast number of shrines, some Shinto and some Buddhist, and they all seem to be very beautiful and very well cared for.  He also learnt about umbrella-making – a useful skill to have, if you’re trying to cope with April showers.  And he spoke to two geisha, and learnt about the history of geisha and how the tradition still remains, and differs from some Western views of it.

He also learnt about one of the epic novels of medieval Japan … which I suspect is lurking on my Kindle somewhere, along with some epics of medieval China, none of which I’ve had time to read.  Never mind!

I thought that the BBC had cut the budget for this and that Michael was only going to be travelling around the UK for the time being, so I’m rather chuffed that he’s doing a long distance trip, and am looking forward to the rest of the series!

 

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

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This is a book for very young children, so it’s short and simplistic – but, for that age group, it’s excellent, and covers this month’s “reading challenge” topic of mean girls/school bullies.  What happens here, in a primary school in early twentieth century rural Connecticut, is that cool girl Peggy and her sheep-like best friend Maddie make fun of their classmate Wanda, because she wears the same old dress to school but claims that she has a hundred beautiful dresses at home.  Wanda’s hard-working widowed dad has little money and is struggling to raise his two children alone, and is also having to cope with them all getting grief about their Polish surname and accent, but the other kids don’t see that – until Wanda disappears from school and the teacher tells the class that her family have moved away, because everyone in the area was being unkind to them.

Later, Wanda sends a letter to the class for Christmas, expressing kind thoughts to everyone.  Peggy and Maddie realise how horrible they’ve been, and vow never to treat anyone badly again.  As I said, it’s a book aimed at very young children – but the whole issue of bullies, now sometimes referred to as “mean girls” or “mean boys” is a big thing in school stories, because it’s something that affects all schools.  Single-sex, co-educational, private, state, day, boarding … even the King fell foul of school bullies.   But, in books, things usually turn out OK.  The bullies either get their come-uppance, see the error of their ways, or, usually both.  Does that happen in real life?  Does it heck as like!

What sometimes happens in books is that either the bully or the victim is welcomed into the other’s circle of friends, or even that they become bosom buddies, e.g. Jack Lambert and Jane Carew in the Chalet School books.   It may happen in books: I’m not sure that it happens in real life.  And, apparently, “bully romances” are now a thing – one character (usually a boy) bullies another character (usually a girl), and then they get together.  Ugh.  Disliking someone at first sight but then realising that they are actually your Mr Right (Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe) is one thing, but I find it rather disturbing that children’s books should be suggesting that there’s something romantic about bullying.

And the victim usually forgives them.  Huh!   Maybe I’m just not a very book-heroine person, but I still harbour … shall we say “negative thoughts” towards people who were horrible to me at school.   I’m sure they’ve all long since forgotten that I exist – but I don’t think that those on the receiving end ever do forget.   One of the best “mean girls” books is Blubber by Judy Blume, in which main character Jill joins in with the in-crowd in bullying a girl called Linda, only for the in-crowd to turn on her at the end … but it’s only Jill who ends up suffering, not Wendy, the one who starts all the bullying.

Anyway, hooray for books, in which the nasty kids always get their come-uppance.  If only it worked like that in real life!!

Pilgrimage: the road to Holy Island – BBC 2

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  Nice to see this back for another year, and nice to see it highlighting the importance of the Northern Saints.  That sounds like the name of an indie band.   Ending up at Lindisfarne … which *is* the name of a folk band.  I should really say “North Eastern Saints”, because, after starting off in Whitby, and seeing the abbey associated with St Hild, this was very much a north eastern thing – taking in the magnificent Durham Cathedral, the wonderful Lindisfarne/Holy Island and St Cuthbert’s Cave, along with the Newcastle Reform Synagogue and the Islamic prayer room at Durham University.  Shout out to Elinor M Brent-Dyer fans, who will associate “the northern saints” with the Clitheroe family in Janie of La Rochelle!

As with most of these things, the cast consisted of fairly Z-list celebs; but some interesting points were made, especially by Hermione Norris, and the views of the north eastern landscapes were spectacular.  And this series really took us back into history in a way that not even the Camino series did.  Holy Island, possibly because of its remoteness, really doesn’t get the attention that it deserves.  It’s a fascinating place: Mum and I went there some years ago.  And the “northern saints” tend to be overlooked, whilst all the attention goes to later, southern, saints, who are famous largely either for being murdered because a king got in a strop or dying without naming an heir.  The Nicola Griffith book about St Hild did earn some plaudits but could have been better, and the Benjamin Myers book about St Cuthbert was dreadful!

So, it was nice to see the spotlight being turned on a neglected part of history.  Three interesting episodes.

The Wandering Queen by Claire Heywood

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This is subtitled “A Novel of Dido”, and I wanted to read it because we “did” Book IV of the Aeneid, the “Dido and Aeneas” book, for GCSE Latin.  Many moons ago!  I can’t remember much of the Aeneid in Latin, other than “forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit”, but I remember the general story.   Book IV’s very annoying, because the great Dido, founder of Carthage, burns herself alive when stupid “pius Aeneas” dumps her.  You were too good for him, love! I’m pleased to say that Claire Heywood’s changed that ending.

And it’s also relevant at the moment, in a way, because Dido’s home city of Tyre, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, is currently under an evacuation order because of the war between Hezbollah and Israel.   Yet again, Lebanon is suffering because of other people’s conflicts.  Will someone please, please sort this out?

Anyway, to get back to the book, writing a book set around a story which may be true, may be a legend or may be a bit of both can’t be easy!    And the original Dido story shows her as determined to remain true to her late husband, burning herself alive rather than marry the neighbouring king Iarbas.  I’ve always thought of Iarbas as a bully, but he’s actually very nice in this book: he wants to marry Dido but doesn’t pressurise her, and is genuinely hurt when she turns him down and then takes up with Aeneas.  And there’s the Virgil version, in which Venus turns Dido into a sappy lovesick weakling who just moons over Aeneas – who is really not worth mooning over! – and then burns herself alive with grief when he leaves.

Claire Heywood’s said that she wanted to use the Aeneas story because it’s so well-known, but that she’d put the time at which Dido lived, if she did, in the 9th century BC, and the Trojan War, if it happened, in the 12th century BC – so she’s moved Dido back three centuries to make it work.

And, given that the characters have different names in different versions of the story – and, in the case of the Aeneid, sometimes in the same version of the story! – decisions had to be made on names.  Dido is referred to as Elissa in the chapters set in Tyre and Dido in the chapters set in Carthage. The book jumps backwards and forwards between the past in Tyre and the present day in Carthage – which may be a bit confusing for people who aren’t familiar with the story.  Her husband, whom I know as Sychaeus, is called Zakarbaal here.  The goddess whom I know as Astarte is Ashtart … which is correct, because Astarte is the Greek version of the name, but still confused me!   The people ruled by Iarbas, whom I know as the Gaetuli, are the Auseans.  And the Tyrians are referred to as Canaanites rather than Phoenicians, which sounds very Biblical!

It’s sensibly suggested that there might have been an international language of diplomacy, Akkadian being the one chosen.  Both Homer and Virgil have everyone apparently just understanding each other, with no explanation as to how!

The one major character who doesn’t feature is Venus.  The name of the mother of Aeneas is never mentioned.  It’s a human story – starting with Elissa’s love for her father and her brother, her despair when her father’s will, naming her as co-heir, is overturned, her love for her husband, and her grief at his murder.   The problem is that, without Venus getting involved, it’s hard to see why a woman like Dido would be attracted to a wuss like Aeneas, and Aeneas then looks like a baddie for dumping Dido without being made to do so by divine forces.   The author does her best to give reasons for it all, to be fair, including showing Dido becoming close to little Ascanius but the parts of the story before the Trojans arrive work better.   There are some wonderful scenes set at the Tyrian court.

The famous oxhide scene – which isn’t in the Aeneid, as it happens before the Trojans arrive is there.  Oh. and so is the scene with Dido and Aeneas in the cave, which caused a lot of sniggering amongst GCSE students!  But there’s more emphasis on Dido’s female friendships, with her maid, and with Anna.  I know Anna as Dido’s sister, but, here, they meet in Cyprus, where Anna is a Cyprian (in all senses of the word), and bond when Anna saves Dido from a would-be attacker.  The women are definitely to the forefront here, continuing the trend of the many other “retellings” of myths and legends which have been published in the last few years.

It’s not a long or particularly detailed book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it – although purists will be put out that the ending’s been changed.   Recommended!.

 

 

The Blood Years by Elana K Arnold

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  Czernowitz/Chernivtsi/Cernauti, the capital of Bukovina/Bukovyna/Bucovina, is one of those Eastern European cities with a gloriously complicated history of being passed between different rulers.  At the start of the First World War, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with a mixed population of German-speaking Jews, German-speaking Catholics, Romanian-speaking Orthodox Christians and Ukrainian-speaking Orthodox Christians. When the empire was dissolved, it became part of Romania.  During the Second World War, it was occupied by the Soviet Union, then retaken by Romania, then allied with the Nazis, and then retaken by the Soviets, formally becoming part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1947.

This book is a fictionalised version of the experiences of the author’s grandmother, a Czernowitz native who, as a young Jewish girl, survived the Holocaust.  The pro-Nazi Romanian government deported tens of thousands of Jewish and Roma people from Bukovina to Transnistria, then under Romanian administration.   This wasn’t done by the Germans, it was done by the Romanians; and the book repeatedly asks how people could just turn on their neighbours like that.  We heard the same question asked during the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.  Is it long-held hatreds coming to the surface, or is it people jumping on the bandwagon?

Frederieke, the character based on the author’s grandmother, lives in an unusual family set-up.  her father has run off with another woman, and she, her mother, her sister and eventually her sister’s husband all live with her beloved grandfather.  The elderly grandfather is murdered outside his own home by wartime Romanian guards.  On top of all the horrors of the war years, Frederieke is sexually abused by a family “friend”, and suffers from TB.  But, somehow, she survives it all.

The book jumps backwards and forwards at first, which is a bit confusing.  I wish people would just write chronologically!  Life for the Jewish population of the city becomes increasingly difficult in the late 1930s.  When the Soviets come, the retreating Romanian Army carries out a pogrom against the Jews of a neighbouring town, and then the Soviets carry out atrocities of their own, deporting many people, mostly Orthodox Romanians, and killing others.  When the Romanians take over again, the Jewish population is forced into a ghetto, and deportations begin.  But the mayor of Czernowitz arranges for some Jews to be exempted, and, as Frederieke’s brother-in-law is a doctor and her grandfather claims to be an engineer, they are allowed to remain.

In 1945, the Soviets (referred to in the book as “the Russians”) take over again, and encourage non-Ukrainians amongst the local population to leave.  Frederieke chooses to leave … and the book ends there.

It’s quite simplistically written, in the present tense and from the viewpoint of a young girl, only a young child at the start of the book.  But it’s well worth reading.   The Romanian part in the Holocaust, notably in Odesa, tends to be glossed over.  And so many of these cities which were ethnically and religiously mixed for centuries ceased to be so as a result of the Holocaust, of changing borders, and of what would now be called “ethnic cleansing” at the end of the war.

Chernivtsi, as it’s now called, has, in the last four years, received a significant influx of people fleeing Russian attacks elsewhere in Ukraine, some of them hoping to cross the border into Romania.   It’s nicknamed “Little Vienna”, or sometimes “Little Prague”.  It would be nice to go there, and to Lviv, were it safe to go to Ukraine at the moment.

We seem to be a very long way away from early 1990, when we were supposed to be entering an era of peace!   36 years … how has it possibly been 36 years?

Maybe, one day.  In the meantime, this is a fascinating book about a little-known part of the atrocities of the war years.

 

The Book of Negr0es by Lawrence Hill

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This is an excellent book about slavery in the 18th century.  Some of it was a bit far-fetched, and I could have done without the visit to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace (which wasn’t their official residence then!) and the repeated use of the term “Brits” (which wasn’t used until the Second World War!), but, all in all, it was very good and very informative, and tried very hard to give an accurate depiction of the times.

It was told in the first person through the eyes of Aminata, abducted from her home village in West Africa as a child and sold into slavery.  It was made clear that the slave traders who took her were fellow Africans, something that’s often airbrushed out of history.  It was also made clear that she was a Muslim: we tend to think of slaves in North America as being Protestant Christians, but many of the first generation slaves would have been Muslims.  We were given a harrowing portrayal of the march to the coast and then the horrific crossing in one of the notorious slave ships, with many people not surviving the voyage.

On arrival in what’s now South Carolina, Aminata was sold to a brutal indigo plantation owner, who sexually assaulted her and treated all his slaves very harshly.  She did manage to reunite with Chekura, a young man who’d been on the same ship as her, and they were married and had a son, but the son was sold away.

That’s the picture that most people have of slavery in the Deep South, the plantation and the brutal owner – although we did also see the bonds between the slaves.  The author then chose to shake things up by showing Aminata being sold to London-born merchant Solomon Lindo, a fictional member of the well-known Jewish family after whom the Lindo Wing at London’s St Mary’s Hospital (where royal babies are born!) was named, and moving to Charleston.

This was much more ambiguous, and rather interesting.  Lindo taught Aminata to read and write in English.  He and his wife were quite kind to her.  He also objected to her classing him as one of the “whites”, saying that he was not regarded or treated as an equal by the Anglicans (the author always used “Anglicans” rather than “Protestants”, although surely there were some Presbyterians and Nonconformists around!).  He also put her, as a skilled and experienced midwife, on the “self hire” system, meaning that she earned some money and was able to keep some of it.  But she was never allowed to forget that he was her owner – and she also found out that he’d been involved in the sale of her son.

They travelled to New York, as the Revolution was breaking out, and Aminata ran away and joined a community of former slaves, working as a midwife but living in poverty – but in freedom.  War came to the city, and we saw the effects of it.  And, famously, the British promised freedom to any slaves/runaway slaves who joined the Loyalist effort.  At the end of the war, it was agreed, although with rather complex terms, that those who’d done so would be given passage to territories that remained under British control.

This was where “The Book of Negroes” came in.   It’s a real book, recording the names and some details of all the “Black Loyalists” – some free, some slaves – who left at this time.  In the book, Aminata was engaged as a scribe.  That wouldn’t have happened, but it made for a good story.

However, at this point, things got rather daft.  Aminata’s husband and both of her former owners all turned up.  The plantation owner demanded that she be returned to him, but Solomon Lindo proved that he’s bought her, and gave her her freedom.  So she was able to leave for Nova Scotia, but became separated from her husband, and later learned that his ship had gone down.  She gave birth to their child, but the child was later kidnapped by a white couple (why??) and taken to Boston.

In Birchtown, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Aminata made a new life for herself as a respected member of the Black Loyalist community.   Then, in 1792, she joined a group going to settle in the new colony of Sierra Leone.  This is a little-known part of history, and it’s portrayed very well in the book.  For Aminata, it was supposed to be the closing of a circle, the return to Africa.  But, when she tried to get back to her home village, she came close to being recaptured and re-enslaved, and decided to accept an offer to go to London and speak to leaders of the Abolitionist movement there, to try to stop anyone else going through what she’d been to.

In London, her daughter reappeared and they were reunited.  I did say that some of the book was rather far-fetched, but at least it gave the now elderly Aminata a happy ending!   And the book ended just before slavery in the British Empire was abolished … although nearly half a century before slavery in the USA was abolished.

It was an excellent portrayal of a difficult part of history, by a mixed heritage author.  It cannot be easy to try to be fair and impartial when showing the events concerned, but he did that.  We saw that things were more complex than they are often said to be, and it was good to read about the Black Loyalists moving to Canada and the settlers moving to Sierra Leone, rather than a standard plantation slavery novel.   Highly recommended.

Ballet Shoes – National Theatre At Home

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  I’m disappointed that this hasn’t been taken round the country – and, on that subject, when is the Paddington musical being taken round the country?! – but was very pleased to have the chance to watch it online.  It was made available for viewers in the UK yesterday, and you can rent it for £7.99.    It’s a lovely way to spend two and a half hours.  Obviously the book’s had to be cut down to fit the story into a stage show; but the gist of the story’s there, especially the characters of the three Fossil girls, and their vow to stick together and be known for their own achievements and not “because of our grandfathers”.

I do not get this obsession with “updating” things, though.   Why do people seem to think that kids today can’t relate to anything that isn’t set in their own time?   Is that not rather insulting to kids?!   And no-one seems to think that kids might have a problem relating to, say, Hogwarts or Narnia, so why on earth would they have a problem relating to something set in the 1920s?   Was it really necessary to have Sylvia wandering around in dungarees (which actually looked more 1980s than 2020s)?  It was particularly daft as most of the music and dancing clearly *were* 1920s.

Does this happen anywhere else?   I somehow can’t imagine, for example, a Canadian theatre company showing Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde wearing dungarees.

The dungarees irritated me.  As you may have gathered.  But Nana, GUM and the three girls all came across much more as they were in the books.

Which Fossil are you?  I usually say Petrova (despite my annoyance at the fact that she’s given a surname for a first name).  I’m worse than useless at anything practical and haven’t got a clue about cars and aeroplanes, but I like the fact that she’s different.

Posy is irritating.  She’s realistic enough, because you do have to have a streak of selfishness to succeed in any sort of showbusiness.  But Streatfeild seems to like showing her ballerinas as being exceptionally self-centred: don’t get me started on Lydia Robinson in the Gemma books.  But, still, like most little girls in the 1980s, I did imagine myself being a ballerina.  More of a Veronica Weston than a Posy or Lydia, though.  Or maybe a Caroline Scott: I waited hopefully to “lose my puppy fat” and magically blossom into a beauty at the age of 15 or so.  Still waiting!   *And* Caroline got to be swept off her feet by a handsome Spaniard (hooray for the start of the European clay court season!!).  Anyway.  Unfortunately, my ballet teacher, like a lot of school PE teachers, was only interested in people who were any good.  Clumsy fat kids like me got shoved in the back row and weren’t allowed to do anything other than walk in a straight line, leaving most of the dance floor free for the “good” kids to do the polka.  I so wanted to do the polka!  I never got to do the polka.  I gave ballet up after a year or so.  Oh well.   But I never, ever, identified with Posy!

But then there’s Pauline.  She did come across really well in this adaptation, overcoming her early brattish behaviour and becoming the responsible one whose work ended up being the family’s main source of income.   The scriptwriters/producers rather tied themselves in knots with the financial issues.  Heaven forfend that they should say that the girls were at a fee-paying school, so the reason given for them going to Madame Fidolia’s school was that they’d been expelled from several previous schools due to bad behaviour!  (No, me neither.)   And they also played down all the stuff with the Devoted Servants working for nothing: we just got Nana saying that she hadn’t been paid but that she was really one of the family.  Also, Sylvia’s wussiness was played down.  Sorry, I know that it wasn’t Sylvia’s fault that her great uncle dumped three kids on her and then disappeared, but could she (in the book) not have at least tried to get a job?!   But, despite all that, they made the point that it was Pauline’s earnings that were keeping things going.

On the subject of finances, what about the lodgers?  Well, they’d been “updated” as well.  Theo had become an American jazz artist.  Mr Simpson had become an Indian man called Mr Saran – and he got together with Sylvia.  No Mrs Simpson, and no Dr Smith either.  However, we were told that Dr Jakes was there because she’d been evicted from her previous home after her female partner died and the house passed to her partner’s brother … who got her sacked from her teaching job by telling her headmistress that she was a lesbian.  A sadder story than the two female doctors living happily together, but one that certainly could have happened.   Pauline immediately twigged that Dr Jakes was a lesbian.  That is *not* shown in the book, but I’m sure she did.  Most readers do.  And the way in which the lodgers helped the girls was portrayed very well.

Some of it was a bit exaggerated and pantomimish, and adding to the pantomime feeling was Madame Fidolia being played by a man (er, and then dropping dead), but it was originally intended as a Christmas show.   And there was plenty of music and dancing, which added to the entertainment.  All in all, it was very enjoyable.   “Updating” notwithstanding!

 

 

 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

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  I’m not a great fan of time travel novels.  I appreciate that the Outlander series and the TV adaptation thereof are both extremely popular, but, TBH, I found this book rather silly.  I lost count of the number of times that either or both characters (Claire and Jamie) were captured and or nearly killed.  And that was in between Claire seeing the Loch Ness monster and being tried as a witch.  It certainly wasn’t boring, I’ll give it that, but it was just rather daft.

Also, some of it was extremely distasteful, notably one character’s weird sexual obsession with another and the trivialisation of his sexual assault of his victim towards the end.

In 1946, Claire and her husband Frank are on a second honeymoon in the Highlands, trying to get back to some sort of normality after the war, during which Claire served as an Army nurse.  On a visit to the Clava Cairns, Claire somehow gets transported back in time to 1743 (i.e. two years before 1745!), where she meets and later marries Jamie Fraser, a “tacksman” and fugitive from the government.   Everyone seems to be plotting against everyone else, chasing everyone else and threatening everyone else.

It’s a long book and, as I said, it’s not boring; but I’m not really getting what all the hype’s about!

Tides of Honour by Genevieve Graham

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  I appreciate that the idea of this book is to bring together the First World War and the Halifax Explosion, but the logistics of the story don’t really work.  Sussex-born Audrey, living with her miserable grandmother in a remote part of the French countryside, meets Canadian soldier Danny.  They begin corresponding and decide to marry.  So then Audrey hops across the Channel – as one does, in 1916 – gets a job in a munitions factory, saves up the money for her passage, and then takes ship across the Atlantic … as one does, in 1917.   All right, civilian travel didn’t stop completely, but the book makes it sound as if it were all as easy as pie!

The idea of the book is very good.  Danny, who comes from a rural community in Nova Scotia, suffers a life-changing injury during the war.   After he and Audrey fail to settle in his home area, they move to Halifax (the one in Nova Scotia, not the one t’other side of Rochdale), and are caught up in the Halifax Explosion – the collision between two ships, one carrying a large amount of explosives, which killed nearly 1,800 people and left thousands of others with severe injuries, many of them blinded by fragments which lodged in their eyes.  Audrey’s eyesight is unaffected, but she does suffer a permanent injury.  The idea of each of them accepting what has happened to the other, and helping each other to deal with it, *could* have worked very well.

However, there’s a stupid storyline about some kind of gangster boss, who fancies Audrey, telling her that Danny’s been killed and making sure that Danny thinks Audrey’s been killed, and Audrey taking up with him and becoming pregnant.  The book would have worked really well without that.  As it was, I just ended up feeling annoyed and frustrated, although I was interested to learn more about the devastating explosion.   Could’ve been an excellent book.  As it was, just so-so.

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

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  Hooray, I managed to finish this in time to post the review the night before Nowruz, the Persian New Year – which, this year, coincides with Eid, something which only happens once every 30 years or so.  This is a lovely book but also a distressing book, and follows the lives of two female friends from their primary school days, in the 1950s, up to 2022, when they’re in their late 70s.

The main theme is the position of women in Iran and the ongoing struggle for women’s rights – for which Iran is currently ranked 140th out of the 177 countries included in the study.   But there are also some wonderful descriptions of bazaars, of festivals, and of food.  Lots and lots of descriptions of wonderful, delicious food, a big part of every culture.

When Elaheh (known in later years, when she’s living in Massachusetts, as Miss Ellie, which may or may not have anything to do with Dallas)’s father dies, she and her mother are forced to give up their luxurious home in a well-to-do part of Tehran, and move to a poorer area.  There, Elaheh becomes best friends with Homa, who dreams of becoming a lawyer and changing the lives of women in Iran (then known to most people outside the country as Persia) for the better.   The two girls are top of their class in an all-female school where pupils are aware that they are the first generation of Iranian women for whom a career is a real possibility.  Elaheh envies Homa’s happy home life, but then Homa’s father, a communist, is arrested following the coup of 1953, and spends many years in prison.

Elaheh’s mother remarries, and she and Elaheh move away and resume their former position in society.  Elaheh attends an elite school.  Then – possibly not very realistically – Homa turns up there too.  Elaheh, now very much in with the in crowd, is briefly concerned that her old mate will embarrass her in front of her new friends, but Homa settles in well.  Another of their close friends, Niloo, is Jewish, and some of the other girls at the school are Christian.  There are still religious minorities in Iran: we all seem to forget that sometimes.   And there’s an ingoing clash between the westernised culture of the teenage in crowd, Homa’s radical ideas, and the traditional ideas of Elaheh’s mother.

They go on to university, and Homa is involved in radical circles.   Jealous of Homa’s friendship with another girl, Elaheh, who’s studying English, offers to help out by translating Western pamphlets.   Then a friend’s husband, whom it turns out is a spy for the regime, tricks Elaheh into telling him about Homa’s political work.  Homa is arrested.

Until this point, everything’s been told from Elaheh’s viewpoint, and in the past tense.  It then changes, with some of it told from Homa’s viewpoint, in the present tense.   And there are a lot of big gaps in time.  We learn that, whilst Elaheh’s got her degree and made a happy marriage with a wealthy and successful man, Homa’s life has fallen apart.  She was raped in prison, and, as a result, gave birth to a daughter, Bahar.  An old admirer married her and saved her from the shame that would otherwise have surrounded her.  But, later, he’s killed in an Islamic fundamentalist attack on a cinema.  The character’s obviously fictional, but the attack on the cinema did really happen.

The two women lose touch.  Elaheh’s overwhelmed with guilt, and Homa is struggling to deal with life.  But they do move on.  Homa becomes a teacher.  Elaheh and her husband move to New York.  It’s meant to be a temporary move but, after revolution sweeps Iran in 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini takes control and imposes fundamentalism on the country, they remain there.  They have no children: Elaheh suffers three miscarriages but, sadly, never has a living child.

And then Homa, unexpectedly, gets in touch, to ask if Elaheh and her husband will take Bahar.  Somehow (again, possibly not realistically, but never mind) a student visa is arranged, so that Bahar can go to high school and then university in America.  Homa remains in Iran, continuing to work for women’s rights.  She hopes at one time to join Bahar in America, after a visit during which she told Elaheh that the reason she was assaulted in prison was her refusal to give the name of the translater, i.e. Elaheh, but is arrested, imprisoned for a while, and then forbidden to leave the country.

No grudges are held.  There’s a lot of use of the phrase “In gozasht”, meaning “It’s in the past”.  Being a fan of The Proclaimers, I often tell myself that things are “Over and Done With” … but I tend to cling on to them anyway.  And there’s a lot of talk about not tempting the evil eye.  I get a bit obsessive about that.  (Er, OK, it’s not all about me.)

When the book ends, in 2022, Elaheh/Miss Ellie is running a cafe in Lexington, Massachusetts, regarded as a grandmother by the children of Bahar and her American husband, whilst Homa takes part in the protests which follow the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.

They all hope that things in Iran will, one day, improve.

A couple of minor whinges, but these are due to the author not being from an English-speaking country.  Bahar, born in the mid 1960s, would not have had a schoolfriend called Madison, as the name (as a first name for a girl) was only invented in 1984, for the film Splash!  And, AFAIK, no-one said “passive-aggressive” in the 1970s.  /whinge

In a different world, it would have been wonderful to visit the fascinating, historic city of Tehran.  In a different world, Homa would have achieved all her dreams.  Women like her deserve so much better.

This book is well worth reading.