More books of note reviewed by a librocubicularist*

The Devil on the Doorstep
My Escape from a Satanic Sex Cult
by Annabelle Forest

Reading this, I felt grateful that long ago we all switched to the Osho Zen Tarot decks and stopped using the Crowley one. Like going from dark to light. Anyway, here is a book about a creepy, sordid, dim-bulbed, bad-food-eating cult of Crowley-ites in Wales, at the mercy of the greasy, tall, one-toothed, paedophile, control-freak, word-salad-spouting boss man who started it.

This icksome character managed to attract a small harem and regaled it with peculiar lore whilst groping, prostituting, impregnating, ordering, the women; and any males around including his own sons, are persecuted. Gah.

Anyway, the woman who wrote this was dragged there at age 7 by an evil mom and spends the next 12 years having horrible things happen to her. Her story of breaking free is gripping and real. It was the protective, empowering hormones conferred by motherhood that gave her the courage, the strength, and the imperative to escape.

Yet another instance where a bad-breathed mini-tyrant runs rampant and one’s only hope is to trust one’s instincts – which she had been absolutely conditioned to ignore; and of course as a child she’d had no choice. Learning as an adult to trust those instincts was then incredibly challenging.

It’s a story clearly told, readable, gritty, and touching. It’s always good to be reminded to trust our gut – and to remember that kids are so very vulnerable.

Lost at Sea
by Jon Ronson

A thick collection of Guardian articles by this inimitable investigator. He roasts, and is roasted by, the (apparently very unpleasant) Sylvia Browne, the psychic; digs into unexplained cruise-ship deaths, income disparities and the effects thereof (using himself as one example), Santa Claus in Alaska, scientists who listen for ET broadcasts, eating competition contestants, and much more.

I’d read some on other collections but some were new to me. It’s from 2012 so much water has gone down the Ganges, but it’s funny and peculiar and has much of value to say, in its understated yet inescapable way.

Otter Country
In Search of the Wild Otter
by Miriam Darlington

A richly poetic nature-celebration and exploration. The author has been passionate about otters since childhood, and she undertakes a series of journeys around England, Scotland, and Wales to try to view them – often by getting right down into the streams, rivers, marshes, bogs, and other wet places where the creatures frolic and hunt.

On the way she speaks with otter experts of various sorts, including a woman who is tasked with autopsying all the dead otters sent to her – almost always killed by cars.

The author is a poet, and includes some beautiful verses by other poets. The general effect is like going on a hike lasting days where you carry both binoculars and a magnifying glass, and use these so much that you forget what day it is or what county you are in. You emerge kind of drunk, feeling that someone has hijacked you away from the normal concerns of your world. It reminded me a little bit of The Salt Path in the relentlessness of its nature-descriptions – which nevertheless have a very salutary effect.

The Happy Hoofer
by Celia Imrie

A theatre memoir par excellence. What a lively, diverting, insecure, colourful, fun-loving life! I was particularly struck by how many laughing fits and giggling attacks she reports among actors. She has a nice riff about this towards the end: she says the really creative times are when you lose it and fall about laughing, because it means you are relaxed, and then your creativity can come out. Directors sometimes don’t like it as time and film were wasted, but… she says, not really wasted.

I never saw her work, as I’ve never had a TV and never chanced on a movie she was in or went to a play of hers. But I still stayed interested in all the jobs she reports on. Lots of travel! Silly things going on! Evil dictators she met! India! Los Angeles! Australia! Lots of other actors make appearances.

I bought this book on the strength of one detective novel she wrote, about a troupe of actors in a cruise ship, which was really good. Her writing is earthy, with full respect for the mundane, and the absurdity of things.

All in all a full and rollicking life, with its difficult moments left intact for the narrative. Written with consummate ease. Recommended!

The Rosie Effect
by Graeme Simsion

Sequel to The Rosie Project, which I enjoyed – an unusual book altogether! And this one too.

An Australian professor of genetics, “on the spectrum” – though there is never a precise diagnosis – tries to navigate the world of love and marriage – and now impending parenthood – using the only tools he has: logic, reason, stats, research.

This understandably irritates his very human, bumptious, and self-reliant wife, a medical and psychology student. Various peculiar characters intervene and silly and peculiar events unfold. All of which the hero parses with his logic; but he is also very humanly in love with his wife.

I learned some things: stress, ie cortisol, in pregnancy predisposes the child to have depression issues when it grows up. Wearing your underwear to bed is bad for health (not that I do that). And other interesting tidbits.

It’s all narrated by the hero with academic rigour. Which I found somehow reassuring, I don’t know why.

It’s a fatter book than the first one, and at times I wished it would speed up a bit, but the general effect is heartwarming – paradoxical given the helpless coolness (and, okay, not paradoxical, given the also-helpless warmth) of the hero.

Book of Poems
Libro de poemas
by Federico García Lorca
edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum

When I was 16 I was given a slim bilingual volume of Lorca’s poems. The giver was the artist Morris Graves, who painted mystic birds and lived in a grand Zen log house beside a small lake studded with islands that had formed around treetops – the lake was a relic of ancient glacial action. Morris was mentor and friend to my sister and me, and remained so until his death much later.

Suffice it to say that the gift was treasured, and was perfect for me, and stayed with me on my travels till it nearly disintegrated. I ordered this one prior to a trip to Spain in 2014. I’ve read a bit about the poet’s life – and terrible murder by firing squad, ordered by Franco. And the book begins with a short biography.

Spanish is in my blood – at least to some degree – our neighbours spoke it when I was a child, our mother was fluent in it and wrote poetry in it too. So the whole book flows for me, and if I read aloud to myself in Spanish, knowing I am not really doing it very well, it doesn’t matter – it’s just such a good language for poetry. A dual-language book is so helpful for learning, too.

I open the book at random, to this:

“La sombra de mi alma / huye por un ocaso de alfabetos, / niebla de libros / y palabras. / ¡La sombra de mi alma!

The shadow of my soul / flees through a sunset of alphabets, / a mist of books / and words. / The shadow of my soul!”

I could say the same!

The Big Cat Man
An Autobiography
by Jonathan Scott

I found this book in a local book-trading booth, and it had no dust jacket, so it didn’t look very inviting – just a dun blue hard cover. But one look inside… well, there are all these drawings, some quite wonderful, and a lot of photographs, from Africa, Antarctica, and more. I had never heard of the author but apparently he’s done a lot of television shows about big cats, following leopards and gazing at them going about their leopard tasks, and the like.

The author is humble and sweet, and of course extremely worried about conservation. I particularly liked his describing of his own childhood – an embarrassing accident he never told anyone about left him traumatised, and perhaps triggered a lifelong nervous condition. We are gratified when he meets an extraordinary woman who shares his passions and pursuits: photographing, drawing, studying wildlife, teaching about it, and guiding people to gaze at it in a way that is safe and non-intrusive for all concerned. At 340 big pages it is an ambitious book, and very well done.

I Knead My Mymmy
And Other Poems by Kittens
by Francesco Marciuliano

This looks on the outside just too cutesy-wootsy, but the poems are actually sassy and perceptive.

Thank you, Nikki, for this little prezzie! I liked it!

Never Call Me Mummy Again
by Peter Kilby

The author began this memoir when he was 69, at his daughter’s request. It’s quite beautiful in the writing, and in the soul that is revealed through it. Difficult to bear the first part… and the latter pages surprise and uplift us.

Peter lost his mother to a botched abortion attempt when the mum was 28 and he was 2. The shitweasel dad moved his evil mistress in and all hell broke loose.

The child ended up living mostly in the woods or other people’s barns – he was particularly targeted by the stepmom, and the other kids were influenced by that.

He ended up in various children’s homes, each of which he ran away from, and later was in the merchant Navy – which he loved. (The children’s homes were often used as shopping malls by pedos. Seems an old tradition.)

He had sixty-plus jobs in his life, which he enjoyed – it turns out he was very bright, and loved to work; and any environment was better than the childhood home, so he tended to be grateful. A mentor or two made lots of difference as well.

A specially touching moment was when he saw for the first time the face of the woman he would marry. He knew he had come home, and that every decision he’d made and everything that had happened had conspired to create that accidental meeting.

It amazes me how people who take out their frustrations on children do not see the child at all, though it is right in front of them. How could someone want to hurt this being?

The Woman in Me
by Britney Spears

When I read this I had never heard her music. I am glad about that, because I liked the book a lot, but when I finally watched some bits of vids I shrank back in horror and revulsion. Soulless bubblegum pop! No sensuality, only the pretend stuff! Glitzy and superficial! Noise!

But the book is raw. It has power and authenticity, if precious little of maturity – until, maybe, the end bits. In its somewhat erratic phrasing there is a candid freshness. I could relate, from my own teenage time, to the author’s confusions, identity crises, fluctuations between child/woman.

Rumi says, “Fame is a disaster.”

This book takes us on a rollercoaster ride – youthful fame, generosity to family, who then get attached to the money-spigot and become controlling. The young person is not centred, nor is she mentored in that art; then comes the age-old tactic for dealing with noisy women: put ‘em in the loony bin. But in this case the cash cow needed to work, so they’d let her out for that, week after week, year after year, without allowing her to change the performances. (She rebelled by refusing to shake her hair: “The men want you to shake your hair around wildly. That makes them think you are enjoying yourself.”)

The artist in her (and this is truly a musician’s memoir, whether you like her style or not) was suppressed and crushed. All of that, and being mercilessly hunted (and mocked) by paps “…like an army of zombies trying to get in every second.”

I can certainly understand why anybody would have weird outbursts. Her dad fat-shamed her daily and the paps liked doing that too.

Her manager dad (“From now on, I am Britney Spears!” he announced when he took over) told her she was not allowed to have her own lawyer. 13 years of captivity later, she found out she could. The lawyer made short work of the whole imprisonment. The last part of the book, therefore, is a hymn to freedom.

The book quivers with a healthy rage, and I got the sense that the dad unwittingly provided the singer with an excellent diving board for a more together, righteous, mature(ish) woman to emerge.

The pacing is quick, the writing mostly clear; the story both old and modern. I feel sorry that I had heretofore dismissed this human as not worth bothering with – in this book, ultimately she commands respect. (And, incidentally, rather than being a shallow blond Californian, she’s actually a passionate, if confused, black-haired Louisianan.)

…Even if I still can’t bear her music.

Country Wives
by Rebecca Shaw

I was in bed for a couple of days with a mild virus, and did not want to read anything full of suffering. This book was perfect!

A novel about a veterinary practice in a small country town somewhere in England, it is soothing and involving.

I was surprised by how sure and clear the writing was – so I’ve ordered the sequel.

Nothing more horrible happens than a bull gone amok, and there are love affairs and troubled marriages and good ones. And it’s always nice to read about animals.

*) a person who reads in bed

Featured image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

These reviews were first posted on Facebook

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