The Scent of Lemon Leaves

Sunday mornings would usually find me sitting at my computer writing this blog but today I had something far more tempting to occupy my time. Apologies, dear reader, but I have been snatched away by author Clara Sánchez who hails from Guadalajara, Mexico, with her latest novel, The Scent of Lemon Leaves. It’s one of those books that suck you in straight away with a tale of bewitching intrigue such that you’ll only be happy when you reach the very end.

Julian receives a letter from his old pal, Salvador Castro, who has been living in retirement in Alicante, Spain. They had both worked at the Centre which was established in order to hunt down Nazi officers scattered all over the world since the end of World War Two. Now, it seems, Salva has spotted a pair of elderly octogenarians who never bothered to change their names: Fredrik and Karin Christensen, both of whom had served in several Waffen-SS units and had overseen the extermination of hundreds of Norwegian Jews. The hunt is on and Julian wastes no time in taking the next available flight. He will find them, he will bring them to justice, and he will never forget what he and Salva suffered at the hands of these butchers who now pose as sugar coated pensioners. Oh, it’s gripping, all right, and now I’m going to make a nice cup of tea before settling down to another chapter – or two!

Sick in the Head

One minute I was coping with the world and the next I was locked in mortal combat with my own body: a killer headache, fever, cold hands and feet, so helplessly utterly exhausted and then, to add insult to injury, a throat that closed over with barbed wire. The problem with being sick is that to have yourself medically diagnosed you need to trot along to your local GP. Never mind that you can’t lift your head off the pillow, that you’ll probably infect an entire waiting room, that the effort will probably make you sicker; at least you’ll have a proper name for whatever ails you and a prescription with lots of squiggly writing.

I’m on the mend now after six days in detention and have just managed to go out and fill up on supplies. I’ve even looked my symptoms up online (cheaper than the doc) and golly gosh, it looks as if I’ve had flu. Luckily, this body of mine is strong enough to fight such nasty invasions but it would be wise to remember that influenza causes the death of up 500,000 people worldwide in an epidemic, and millions can die when there’s a pandemic.

Yes, there were times early on when I could well imagine dying, anything to relieve the feeling of being pummelled to death by hateful evil pygmies who inhabited my bedroom but as you can see I have survived to write another blog. The worst thing of all was that I couldn’t read. I couldn’t concentrate, my eyes so hot and dizzy I couldn’t focus on the page. Mounds of dust-gathering books lay estranged from me for nearly an entire week. But this morning, I managed to pick something interesting from the pile and once again, get stuck in. I think I’ll like it because by page 42 I didn’t flung it on the fire but found a book mark (very civilized) and promised myself that as soon as the shopping has been put away I’ll return to the couch and see how Rukhsana is doing in her one-woman plan to escape the mad men who make the laws in Kabul. The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Urari is out in August 2012 and promises to be a very entertaining and curious read.

Poetry Lives

Another writer takes the stage: full of words born out in lonely rooms, the audience hushed, expectant, wanting some of that writerly success to rub off as they sit and listen and then queue for a dashed illegible signature at the end. Mostly, I sell some books before the event, watch admirers snake into the auditorium, find myself a cup of tea and while away the time till they spill out again, spurred on, inspired, ready to buy more books to take home, pour over and squirrel away.

They came in their droves to the Pavilion Theatre Dún Laoghaire when the poet Paul Durcan rode into town. I sold book after book, shoved them into eager hands that took two or three copies, of Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being. My curiosity was aroused, a seat was found so that I could witness why a poet, in this cynical day and age, could read to a full house when other, more literary names, would sometimes find themselves echoing into the darkness beyond the lights. After a brief introduction, the man of the evening took to the podium - quietly, forcefully, humorously, seriously, with depth and understanding of all the different kinds of human nature – and read for over an hour from his latest book of poetry. Like everyone there, I listened with rapt attention to a master craftsman who lived the words of each piece and took us to the street in Dublin where he met the actor David Kelly, to the mad woman in Hodges & Figgis, to Achill Island and Sandymount Green. And then, when he must have been exhausted, he kindly signed my copy (I was last in that long long queue) with strong clear legible strokes.

A Cast-Iron Excuse
Sorry I cannot come to your reading tonight.
I have to go to the South Pole.

Ne’er a Crossword

It’s the last day of my holiday from work, a week I’ve spent trying out new recipes, shopping for clothes, taking the air, and this morning, getting down to the Saturday crossword by the new guy, Mac an Iarle. We all loved Derek Crosier who was the Crosaire compiler for the Irish Times from 1943 to long after he passed away, at the age of 92, in 2010. Being a forward planner, Crosier left enough puzzles to keep his fans happy for a full year after which time his successor, Mac an Iarle was ready to fill those boots. Crosier was a hard act to follow with his wicked sense of humour though occasional predictable fillers that made it a little easier for learners like me to get a grip. As he once said himself: “It's splendid to think that there are people who from time to time would love to wring my neck.”

Now, there are plenty of readers who would like to wring Mac an Iarle’s neck but only because he has taken them out of their comfort zone and made them have to think just a little bit harder. With a cup of green tea, a slice of my homemade cinnamon buns (from the Avoca Café Cookbook 2), Jessica and I decided to give it a lash. Normally, I’m painfully slow with helpful nudges from my daughter pointing me in the right direction but this morning I was in fighting form and had the key before she even sat down next to me. I was buzzing (must have been that week off) and only paused on 13 across: Fifty-one in a spell revealing half their DNA.

Right, to work this one out you need to remember your Roman numerals and no matter how many time I look it up I can never remember past ten but luckily Jessica explained the clue ever so slowly: the Roman numerals for fifty-one is LI and another word for spell is HEX therefore half of DNA is (double) = HELIX.

There are some wonderful words we have picked up doing the puzzle that have stuck and sound great when dropped in a sentence as if one had swallowed the dictionary whole: Prestidigitation (sleight of hand); dirigible (airship), and funambulist (acrobat) to mention but a few.

I’m back to work tomorrow morning and even the thought of it is making me tired. I love my job, don’t get me wrong, but there are times when a life of leisure is awfully tempting. Anyone out there willing to support me in a life to which I could so easily become accustomed??? I’d bake lots of tasty dishes, help you with the crossword, and never ever ask you to come clothes shopping with me.

Falafel Feast

I have a weakness for beautiful cookery books that doesn’t seem to abate however many seem to weigh down my kitchen shelves. They lie, unread, until I have a couple of days off work when I take time to read them almost like a novel, from beginning to end. The aim is to pick out the more interesting recipes that lie outside my normal day-to-day arsenal of lunches and dinners so that we’re not eating the same foodstuffs from one year to the next.

The food I ate when I was growing up was a fairly predictable limited range that you’d find in almost every house in Ireland: chicken, beef, root vegetables and a kind of Irish stew that defied description. When I left home and was in charge of my own kitchen I began to be a bit more adventurous (often with disastrous results) and was greatly influenced by new friends from exotic places. Ludmilla Korchinskyi whose family came from Kazakhstan, introduced me to recipes and ingredients that I had never heard of. I’d watch her bake with reverend fascination, and when she produced and shared meals full of colour and smells that would take your breath away, I vowed to change the way I viewed food and eating. No more would I take the easy route, buy ingredients that I was used to, cook the same recipes over and over again, hence the plethora of cookery books.

Today I’m going to try a recipe from Alice Hart’s new cookery book, Vegetarian: Butternut Squash & Coriander Falafel with Cucumber Yoghurt (page 42). I love falafel but can’t seem to be able to make it properly so this recipe promises an easier method that involves baking in the oven, rather than deep-frying. Bon Appetit!

Beginner’s Guide

The greatest threat to bricks-and-mortar bookshops and their booksellers is people who make the choice to buy online, especially those who choose electronic devices to which you can download your latest selections and take loads of them on holiday without exceeding your weight restrictions. Cheaper, faster service, lightweight, portable and oh so snazzy, but as my mum used to say: Be careful what you wish for! We could end up with no bookshops on the high street at all, and we could even end up with no books. We could go back to the days when the price of the printed word would only be for the elitist reader who fills a private library as a display of personal wealth. Would our libraries shrink to house reading tables with everything on request at the press of a button and not a single book in sight? Is this progress or is this a potential minefield between the reading public and an impoverished selective future? No one is taking this awful prospect seriously but one day it will be too late: we, your booksellers, will all be gone to an ink filled grave.

Writers will suffer, too. Established names would hold their own but new voices would struggle to be heard, the choices would become limited with little or no opportunity for expression of a different kind. When last week the suave Peter Carey finally signed my first edition, ex library, hardback copy of Parrot and Olivier in America, he made my day. Hopefully the recipient, my beloved nephew, Oisín, will treasure this physical reminder of an evening spent in the company of a writer at the top of his game. The queue that stretched from one end of the theatre to the other was full of readers whose reward would be a signed copy of Carey’s latest novel, and a quick word with the man who won the Man Booker Prize not once, but twice! I wonder how I’d have fared had I downloaded my copy onto a device that would fit in my jeans pocket? Would the occasion have been marked as well with an ethereal signature wafted into space? Nothing could match the pleasure I felt as I carried home this treasured volume (in an evening when the author signed hundreds of books there was but one he choose to personalise) replete with the Irish grammatically correct fada atop the second letter í. It’s the little things, dear reader, the minute details that make such a difference to a bibliophile like me!

I’m currently enjoying Anne Tyler’s latest novel, The Beginner’s Goodbye, which is set in the world of publishing. Aaron, our woebegone protagonist, sits in his office surrounded by books that aim to help the reader undertake a myriad of tasks, and others on how to come to terms with teeming emotions gone awry. Rows of The Beginner’s Guide to just about everything sit on his shelves, staring down as he fumbles with his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Dorothy. With the help of these books, and the people who surround him, Aaron learns how to return to a somewhat normal life, one however, that includes the reappearance of Dorothy at his side. As soon as I’ve done a modicum of household duties I intend putting my feet up and reading it right to the end. When I’m finished, I’ll put it up on the shelf with all her other titles, and maybe I’ll lend it to my more reliable friends who will return it, eventually, so I can enjoy the having of it in my eclectic mishmash jumbled up library of literary loves.

Elif Shafak

One of the best ways to try and understand a culture other than your own is to read good quality fiction by someone in the know. We are so used to how things are done at home. It makes perfect sense when our neighbours, friends and family behave in a particular way because it’s always been like this. But when someone of a different race or culture enters from stage left, all of a sudden there is a yawning gap between what is acceptable and what seems to be plain bonkers. It’s really a matter of what you’re used to.

The first time I heard the term ‘honour killing’ I couldn’t understand it for the life of me; I mean why would anyone want to murder a beloved family member, whatever the reason. It occasionally comes into force when a man is disgraced in the eyes of those around him from whom he will most likely be shunned and eventually ostracised. He can only hold his head up if he is seen to act in such as way as to punish the wrongdoer. By reading Elif Shafak’s novel Honour, I can, at least, say that while I don’t agree with it, I am closer to understanding the complicated and various reasons this tragedy can be allowed to happen.

In the book, the sense of community among Muslim immigrants is what sustains the Toprak family as they, like so many others in the same predicament, try to find work and bring up their families in a totally alien environment. They originally come from a small Kurdish village travelling first to Istanbul then finally settling in a London suburb. While many locals welcome new peoples into their towns and cities, there are many many others who do not which can mean there is often no mix or socialising outside of the extended family. As a result, there is no dilution of culture, no blending or easing in from one to the other but a constant separation one from the other.

There are wonderfully drawn characters in this story from all walks of life. They interact and change each others lives in ways that are recognisable wherever you call home, from love to loss, gambling, duty, friendship, naivety, and familial ties. I would love to have met twin sisters Pembre and Jamila who arrived as the seventh and eight daughters of a family without a son and were called by their devastated mother, Enough and Destiny. This was a community that valued male children above all else though when you think about it, it was just the same here in Ireland not that many moons ago and still persists in countries around the world. The two girls went on to live very different lives and yet their bond was as close as if they had never parted. It will be a long time before I forget the struggles and fortitude of an immigrant family that could be living somewhere near you or me, far beyond our social radar, waiting for their lucky break just like our forefathers who left this starving country to forge a better life for themselves and their children. It certainly makes you think.