Current read #3 The Distant Shore : The Stone Trilogy Book 1 by Mariam Kobras

#AMWRITING post

I was so excited when Johanna Harness (@johannahaness) asked me to write a post for the #amwriting community, if you missed it, you can read it here! I hope you enjoy.

Book Review: Then Again: a Memoir by Diane Keaton

Literature |Ladi-da-lala

Then Again: a Memoir by Diane Keaton

 
Does this picture not just make you smile? It certainly does for me, as it is Keaton’s role as Annie in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall which made me truly fall in love with the actress. It was the adventurous, fun, ditsy easy going Annie in fantastic clothing, rapidly chewing gum that made me follow her around in the movies. Keaton herself is a rather private person, many aspects of Annie are drawn straight from her life but she is not Annie Hall; she is well known for her quirky roles’ but very little else.

We learn that she dated Warren Beatty, Woody Allen and Al Pacino, we also know that that she didn’t marry and gave up on the concept altogether, leaving her childless until her fifties when she decided to adopt two babies. If you are thinking about picking up this book to learn the deepest secrets’ of Diane Keaton that you would be fantastically disappointed as this is not a space simply for the unveiling of an autobiography but it is also the biography of her mother; Dorothy Deanne Keaton Hall who’s mind did what she’d always feared, it began to fail as Alzheimer’s took over..

 Dorothy Hall’s presence in this book, to whom it is a homage to, acts as a bridge in order to assess her own life by studying her mother’s and  in doing so; she looks at herself as a woman, a sibling and a daughter as a form of exorcism. She wishes to shed any guilt she may have felt in not paying attention to her mother outside of her maternal role and almost be forgiven for not noticing her as a photographer, artist and even a writer. Keaton uses the novel form as a platform to finally share with the world her mother and essentially give her, her fifteen minutes of fame. Keaton writes, “If only we could re edit our lives and make a couple of different choices, right, mom?... Now I’m alone, juggling with a memoir that’s also your memoir. Would you have approved of my choices? Am I misrepresenting you? I’ll never know.”

It is Keaston’s own neurosis, be it on body image, beauty or IQ, which creates a chasm between herself and the reader. Although this autobiography reads at times like a confessional in a psychiatric office and a “thinking everything out” space, it can sometime not feel enough, if that is indeed the case, then what is it that the reader is after? Her soul? Well yes actually, it’s exactly what one desires from this very art form. Nonetheless, the longer you allow Keaton’s book to work its magic after reading it, you begin to really see Keaton’s world through her mother’s. There are some wonderful soul revealing and poetic moments, especially upon the arrival of her own children when the cycle of life continues with evermore questions and the realisation that her mother’s presence will live on, especially now that it is on the page.

Then Again: a Memoir by Diane Keaton published by Fourth Estate

Published in Avrupa gazette

Current Read #2 Lone Wolf By Jodi Picoult

Published by Hodder & Stoughton 

Current Read- Night and Day by Virginia Woolf

Mr C was incredibly shocked yesterday that I- a Virginia Woolf fan hadn't read all her novels. I explained that I did this on purpose, that I was dragging her writing out as I knew that it would all end too soon. Does anybody else read so deliberately? It would be interesting to know.

Review - Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch

Literature | If I say jump…ask how high

A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch

A Fairly Honourable Defeat, published in 1970 was Murdoch’s 13^th novel. Murdoch, philosophical in nature once more delves into a litany of philosophical enquiry and whilst doing so; she draws upon the classical plot device of a Shakespearean tragicomedy or black comedy if you will with such gusto that you are left spinning in the air with your fingers gripping the pages. Many gasps left my lips as I veered haphazardly through the pages in a state of astonishment; fear, sickness and amusement. If you are indeed after a stimulating read which will leave your heart in your mouth or in any other part of your body, then do not hesitate to pick this up and be ready to fall down a very long maddening hole.

Murdoch takes a group of people, beginning with a happy event; the twentieth wedding anniversary of Hilda and Rupert Foster who could not be more contented in their marriage, throws in some easily swayed characters, a few eccentric ones and Julius- the novel’s puppeteer. Love and trust are the greatest themes of our lives it seems and it’s certainly drawn upon here. People are so easily pulled apart and what once had a meaning, or thought to be set in stone, is soon dispensed of. An example of this is the home; Hilda and Rupert’s that is. It is a rather perfect home; a swimming pool in a gorgeous walled garden, beautiful flowers always on show, everything in harmony, but these items and aspects that make up a home only create an illusion of happiness, it is just that, an illusion. It never takes long to work out that it is the people in your life that create and destroy true happiness. “Love is the last and secret name of all virtues,” Murdoch writes, love is the key it seems, even William S Burroughs managed to see this at the end of his life and it is what the characters in this novel do not fully trust. They pursue it, they consume it, and politicise and philosophise over it yet it’s not until they are dangling over the precipice that some of them finally understand its essence. Murdoch brings together a bunch of somewhat self-involved characters, lost in their own lives who find themselves unable to help one another out; instead, they are easily led onto a path of destruction. The destruction of the other.

Murdoch, an ever observant author in her writing, brings London to life through detailed descriptions of the weather, the skies and flowers to the point that the setting is sitting on you lap, in fact it’s a setting fit for a stage. Her writing is dramatic, theatrical and utterly absorbing as the reader almost takes part in the unraveling that takes place before them.

Published in Avrupa

©Zehra Cranmer

Souvenance - Happy Birthday Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf

25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941

Current Read #book2 - The Faith of a Writer; Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates