Honeydew by Edith Pearlman

Honeydew by Edith Pearlman, John Murray, 2015

The short story is a form more enjoyed, I suspect, in North America than in the UK. We are too serious and too steeped in Shakespeare for our own good. I have not read a better collection of short stories than this since perhaps Annie Proulx in her prime fifteen or twenty years ago.

The charm of these short stories rest in the speed with which you become engaged with the characters. There is less investment needed and you are soon in the middle of the story. Because of economy, many of the short stories here hang at the end, in a rather disjointed but charming way. Do you want to know what happened next? Time to pick up a novel instead.

Edith Pearlman resists the shorthand of other short story writers, who give false depth through strangeness and bizarre choice of names. The stories in ‘Honeydew’ happen in Godolphin, a fictional Boston suburb, which is comfortable and familiar. Several stories cross-reference each other, which keep you on your toes as a reader, checking back to confirm that a character who was mentioned briefly was detailed in all her richness in another branch of the same tree.

The dust jacket claims that Edith Pearlman is ‘the equal of Updike or Munro’. Can a writer be the equal of well-regarded literary heavyweights and yet be so very different? Part of the appeal of Edith Pearlman’s latest collection is that they cannot be compared with the work of anyone else. There are surprising turns and startling sudden deaths, but they are plotted out with such a matter-of-factness that she stands apart from more esteemed American writers. Perhaps the calm acceptance of death in all its sanitised forms in a fair reflection of Pearlman’s own time of life: an internet search reveals that she is a grandmother.

Brevity is a skill. There are twenty stories in this collection, some barely clocking in at twelve pages. I have great admiration for the writer who has the confidence to set up and break down in such a short space of time. Her stories might as well be occasional glances through shop doors and around curtains in hospital wards, with a few captured phrases from each character. It is a sort of literary equivalent of a long, shared bus ride. There is so much richness in the stories that curiosity is satiated. That is a real mastery of this style of writing.

The Plantagenets - The Kings Who Made England by Dan Jones

Every generation has a historical period with which it closely identifies. Unfortunately for Great Britain in the early Twenty-First Century, it seems that the era over which we most obsess is the Tudor monarchy. A briefest Royal House spanning only one hundred and eighteen years and three generations of monarchs dominates the air-waves. It also fills the primary curriculum, so some unfortunate children are made to ‘do the Tudors’ several times over a school career at the expense of much more interesting periods of our history.

In clearer-cut and less sympathetic times, the Victorians relished the exploits of the Plantagenets. Here were real kings and queens, despots and heroes, and a definite sense of right and wrong. The dynasty suited the Victorian schoolroom, and matched well the Empire-building of the muscular Christians which was seen as a natural extension of England’s greatness.

Dan Jones has written the Plantagenet book for our times. He has created a broad sweep of historical writing that stretches from the glories of Henry II to the ignominy of Richard II. The book covers eight generations of monarchs (the longest unbroken dynasty in English history) and a period of close to three hundred years. It is very, very readable. He does not swamp the text with footnotes, and is precise when required. His main focus is kingship, and this is dealt with using a broad brush – it is obvious that the strong women of the realm are included, but also the pseudo-kings who ruled for extensive periods during the absence of the monarch are included. It fills in the bits that those long hours in the schoolroom left out. For anyone over forty, the history of kings involved learning lists that excluded King Louis (who invaded Thanet in 1216), Simon de Montfort (de facto ruler in 1263), Piers Gaveson (the power behind Edward II’s throne) and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who more or less ruled everything when her sons were absent from the kingdom.

When I picked up this book I feared that I would last about a hundred pages and then put it down. It was a well-chosen Christmas present from my wonderful wife, and I doubted my ability to persevere when the holiday ended. How wrong I was. For a book of history, it is actually a page-turner, which is a very rare thing. For all the skill of Antonia Fraser, I find her books dry and hard to get enthusiastic about. The style of Dan Jones is full of charm, and makes reading the next chapter a pleasure. It helps that he decided to write short chapters. There is nothing more dispiriting than having a half hour to read and not finishing a chapter. It was easy to read a little, do something else, and then return to the narrative. It made me more likely to stick with it.

A central plank to this book is the relationship between the king and the crown. To begin with the two were indivisible. As the centuries ticked on and the king and his household demanded more of the people, more was asked in return. It was no longer enough to rule absolutely and command complete loyalty. It is an interesting exercise to see just how far each Plantagenet could push it. Some were obviously more skilful than their predecessors in knowing how much to ask of the people. Some got it spectacularly wrong. Eventually, the king became a person separate from the idea of kingship. The real interest is in how each dealt with this realisation. Some were kings of action and aggression – martial kings. It is about these kings that the casual reader knows the most, because it is on their achievements that ‘traditional’ history usually dwells. Most readers know that Richard I was the ‘Lionheart’ and liked nothing more than cutting his way through the Near East in the name of his god and his pope. Fewer know about Henry III, a deeply spiritual king. It is perhaps the greatest success of this book that Dan Jones illuminates the long reign of Henry (fifty-six years) and his significant achievements.

It is an unashamedly English book. It is the story of England and its kings, because to weave a coherent history that included Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and even Castile would mean running to thousands of pages. Jones has chosen his focus, and adds detail when necessary, but does not feel the need to explain the intricate nature of Welsh rule, to take one example.

In doing so the author returns to a simpler idea of Englishness, framed in the actions of kings and the reactions of the people. It is uncluttered by the centuries of complication and nationalism. It is an idea to which we can never return, but in learning a little more about it we are slightly wiser when presented with our current problems.

There is so much war that it is a wonder that anyone was left alive at all in 1399, when Richard II made his final, fatal errors. Because the light has shone so brightly on Henry VIII and his six wives, everything else is rather overlooked. If I was a commissioning producer for the BBC, or a Hollywood scriptwriter, I would be ignoring Anne Boleyn and asking Natalie Portman if her Occitan French was good enough to portray Eleanor of Aquitaine. And I would be asking Dan Jones for the details.

Stephen Fry - More Fool Me, A Memoir

‘More Fool Me’ is the third volume of recollections and anecdotes from Mr Stephen Fry; adored quiz person, writer, national treasure, General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, KCB.

Much of the success of a memoir, I think, depends on interesting content, and the ability to follow when shorthand and nicknames are used. Unfortunately for dear Mr Fry, on this occasion both elements work against him. This book covers his life as a media darling, a time of great success and joy for him, but not very exciting for everyone else. His first two volumes tell the story of his childhood and university years, both of which are inherently interesting. However, his time in the eighties and early nineties is little more than a long list of name-checks and endless meals at the Groucho. It is so disappointing, as even Stephen Fry can not pull it off and make it a good read.

It starts well. He writes with warmth about his childhood again, and goes over all the ground covered in the two preceding volumes. He only actually gets down to business on page 69, when he lists all the major establishments in which he has snorted cocaine. Everything prior to this, he reassures the reader on several occasions, can be read in more detail elsewhere.

The next part of the book is a soul-searching analysis of a life maintained in the media whilst filled by a desire to consume large quantities of a Class A prohibited drug. He does this well, and some of his reflection is quite charming. However, he continues to make excuses to the reader that he is working hard not to sound like a luvvie. All that does is make him sound even more of a luvvie.

After another one hundred and fifty pages or more, the anecdotes begin to drift, and it seems like he ran out of time, because spliced on are the pages from his diary from 1993. The diary is a long list of nicknames, details of excessive evenings in London clubs, and stories about people who are only known to their friends in show business. There is a limit to how many ways a person can record evenings of cocaine and vodka and make them at all fun.

What is the reader looking for in book three of Mr Fry’s memoirs? Considering his life and the great successes, something in depth about the wonderful success of ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ would not go amiss. It is only found here in the photographs. Alternatively, some insight into the making of ‘Peter’s Friends’ would also be welcomed, but is absent.

People also want to know about the birth of ‘QI’, but the timeline does not stretch that far. I think it will be testing even the most patient of readers if another volume appears that skates briefly over these successes in the way that this one has done.

Should Stephen Fry be blamed, or is it the fault of the pressure from publishers for a Christmas hit? It is a shame, as he remains the wonderful charming man that he has always been. The chance to record him at his most creative has pretty conclusively been missed – or skipped.