Akenfield

Hello Gentle Reader,

It’s an insistence really. At this point, truly, it is a perspective turned opinion, now fashioned into personal doctrine, that the reverence people hold for the countryside – with their continued yearning for what one person recently called, ‘a parcel piece of land,’ which they continued on with almost bellyaching longing: ‘Barely an acreage. Make it a postage stamp size even, it doesn’t need to be a farm. Just away.’ – all stems from the propagation and the inadvertent propaganda success, of the English romanticising their countryside. Successfully shifting and shaping their island home into a visage of arcadian idyll, second only to Eden itself. A pedestrian paradise of country lanes, snaking canals and rivers, frolicsome hills, chalk white seaside cliffs, shingle beaches, ancient dales, endearing woods, picturesque meadows, and tranquil lakes. Mention the English countryside and already people are conjuring some whimsical image. Perhaps that of Beatrix Potter, with her eloquent watercolour illustrations for her ‘Little Tales,’ which includes the adventures of Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Jeremy Fisher, and the brawling figures of Mr. Tod and Tommy Brock. If not the world of Potter, then perhaps that of Kenneth Grahame and his “The Wind in the Willows,” charting the adventures of Mole and Ratty and those misadventures of Toad. It is worth mentioning in turn, the paganistic piper of the dawn. Who is really the rustic god Pan. Salt and peppered with estates and castles and chocolate box villages, the English countryside retains its hold as a place of imaginative paradise, which everything else pales in comparison. Heralding from the Canadian countryside myself; the notion, thought, prospect, or most likely, threat of returning to those rural roots is nothing short of condemnation, tantamount to incarceration. While true, the Canadian landscape is one of untouched majestic wilderness. It is rustic and rugged, which are polite terms in this context for rough, uncontained, and lacking in civil comforts. Despite this, it is unadulterated beauty is raw, pristine, and majestic, in how little appears to have been spoiled by economic development. This does not mean it is not endangered or under threat, with bulldozers in the name of prosperity and progress waiting to be unleashed. The Canadian countryside despite its variance, diversity, and variety in features and provincial flares, retains one shared and consistent commonality: remoteness. Canadian rural, is not some country retreat, where life can be put on hold or at the very least the back burner for a few days. It is remote, in the extreme sense of the word, bringing to mind shipwrecked souls stranded in nowhere. The immensity of the landscape, is enough to swallow one whole. Why, anyone longs for this, is beyond me. Yet they do and they are out there. My own mother, who comes from rural stock and remains in her own house in what is classified as a rural hamlet, insists upon her love of where she lives. The country, she says, is peace and quiet. There’s no racing and rushing. To me, however, it always carries the sense of being left behind. Stranded in this solitary confinement. Complete with a sense of disenfranchisement and dispossession, with an unacknowledged understanding of desperation and abject poverty, easily missed amongst the usual dirt and muck that is part and parcel of country living.

The late Ronald Blythe was one of the great rural writers of contemporary English literature. Born and raised in the countryside, Blythe never seemed to escape the smallness of this upbringing by carting off to London to chase and realise his dreams of becoming a writer. Rather, Blythe understood the charm of this landscape, the beauty of its worked fields; the class of character found in field and village living their life without acknowledgement; the thankless harshness of the work. Throughout his hundred years, Ronald Blythe, became something of a rural icon and even sage. Critics often describe Ronald Blythe as the progenitor and champion of what is now considered contemporary nature writing. This is due to Blythe celebrating the seasonal rhythms and charms of the countryside from his legendary abode, Bottengoms Farm. All of which provided Blythe (especially in the later stages of his career) the inspiration and landscape turned subject, in which to reflect on the changing world, the nature of God and faith, the passage of time and the continued wonder of the natural world. “Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village,” though, was Blythe’s reputation affirming work. Upon its initial publication in 1969, “Akenfield,” was classified as a classic of modern literature, and has retained this distinction. However, upon its initial publication, the question of literary classification plagued the book. The publisher originally conceived of it as a piece of anthropology/sociology. Blythe, however, found these terms to academic for what the book sought to achieve. And while “Akenfield,” dipped its toe into rudimentary popular ethnography and social surveying, the terms anthropology and sociology, brought to mind robust humanities subjects, complete with scholars, experts, and authorities on the subject. In the same fashion, the notion and term oral history, in the sense of Svetlana Alexievich remained an otherwise niche term. In Ronald Blythe’s opinion, “Akenfield,” was a collection of essays and remembered conversations; a travelogue and piece of investigation, following in the same vein of George Orwell’s “The Road to Wigan Pier,” and the memoir “A Walker in the City,” by Alfred Kazin. Ronald Blythe in similar fashion took on different forms in compiling the material for “Akenfield.” First in returning to familiar ground as a stranger. As the wayward outsider, Blythe would be able to watch and observe. Then a transparent reporter, conversing, interviewing and listening to the stories, histories and memories of the residents. The end product is not a dry record of accounts describing a life or a series of lives, but instead capturing a rich tapestry of a world gradually falling into obsoletion. The precipice of extinction already crossed.

“Akenfield,” is organized into a series of subjects ranging from: “The Survivors,” to “God,” onwards to “The School,” “Four Ladies,” and “The Law,” with each section an ensemble of voices and vocations: Farm-Worker, Doctor, Teacher, Baptist Deacon, Rural Dean, Headmistress, Orchard Worker, District Nurse, Magistrate, Shepherd. No section is reserved explicitly for any individual. For example, “God,” naturally summons forth both the Baptist Deacon and the Rural Dean, but also incorporates the opinions on the nature of rural faith and worship with commentary provided by an Orchard Worker and the Doctor. While other sections such as “The Vet,” “Not by Bread Alone,” and “In the Hour of Death,” are singular, with commentary provided by the titular veterinarian, a poet and the gravedigger. The residents of “Akenfield,” are delineated by generations, which is further divided by defining wars of the 20^th century: the First World War and the Second World War. “The Survivors,” recount the giddying prospect of escape of their meager rural existence. The army brought the notion of adventure to their otherwise predestined lives. What followed was nothing short of horror. Leonard Thompson – who like Blythe’s own father – fought in Gallipoli during the First World War. A failure of a campaign by the allies, where slaughter and death were daily occurrences. Thompson recalls with a macabre humour, the reality of dying over there and the impossibility of a humane (let alone any notion of Christian) burial:

“We set to work to bury people. We pushed them into the sides of the trench but bits of them kept getting uncovered and sticking out, like people in a badly made bed. Hands were the worst; they would escape from the sand, pointing, begging— even waving! There was one which we all shook when we passed, saying, “Good morning,” in a posh voice. Everybody did it. The bottom of the trench was springy like a mattress because of all the bodies underneath.”

And while the horrors of any war would certainly make any dour or decrepit landscape more appealing, Thompson proves to be unsentimental with how the old ways were, when “Akenfield,” (a fictional rendering of the amalgamation of Charlesfield and Debach) and Suffolk in general, was impoverished and neo-feudal in social structure, complete with lacking public infrastructure, and poverty a defining natural feature to life. Thompson recalls the scarcity of water: “had to be fetched from the foot of a hill nearly a mile away. ‘Drink all you can at school,’ we were told — there was a tap at school. You would see the boys and girls filling themselves up like camels.” Ronald Blythe may have reverence and a deep-seated appreciation for the rural landscape, the “glory and bitterness,” of the countryside, but Blythe recognizes its own failings, shortcomings, and everyday cruelties. This is not Potter’s agrarian landscape with Farmer McGregor outwitted by Peter Rabbit and co. Nor is it the leisure land of “The Wind in the Willows.” “Akenfield,” grapples with rural life in manner that is honest, without being swamped in bucolic sentimentality; while refraining from being a runaway vitriolic barrage, holding up the countryfolk as a bumpkin sideshow to be gawked at, as cheap carnival entertainments for the urbane. The countryside for its inhabitants remains in Blythe’s view a place of deep roots and generational legacies:

“Akenfield, on the face of it, is the kind of place in which an Englishman has always felt his right and duty to live. It is patently the real country, untouched and genuine. A holy place, when you have spent half your life abroad in the services. Its very sounds are formal, hieratic; larks, clocks, bees, tractor humming’s. Rarely the sound of the human voice.”

Yet none of the villagers have any romantic attachments for the past. There is no nostalgic yearning for the way things were done before. As one farm-worker puts it, “Every bad thing gets to sound pleasant enough when time has passed. But it wasn’t pleasant then, and that’s a fact.” In their complaints, it is easy (at least for me) to recognise shared complaints, despite growing up under a different sky and a much different world. Farmers, are without a doubt, an easy lightning rod for any rural inhabitant to vex at. Their tax breaks. Their outright cheapness. Not frugality or wise business sense. It’s an outright penny-pinching stinginess. First grade misers. Whereby they could pull out a guitar or fiddle, and play a tune of their woes. If you’ve ever wondered why country music was founded on the blues principles of misery, look no farther then the farmer. Even now, with food costs and inflation, the farmers sing their tired tunes. 

It was and is the mundane cruelties, where I immediately recognized the countryside. Life and death are ever present in the country. Cattle in the fields. Chickens in their coops. Pigs in their pens. All will inevitably make their way to the grocery store and your plate. Forests and mountains are equally open during the season. It’s a conservation effort, helps to keep the populations under control. Then there are others, who through their scopes are not interested in hunting to fill their freezers. Heads. Pelts. Paws. Teeth. Trinkets and trophies are what they’re after. There is a reason there is a local taxidermist. Then there are the others. The poachers. A hunter in some respect can at least be granted a modicum of respect. A granule at best. A poacher, however, is nothing more than a scourge. They kill mindlessly. Brainless beasts of senseless slaughter. There is not an ounce or a grain or a particle of humanity within them. Economic impoverishment? No. Those considered economically disadvantaged, who in their desperation, are best described as hillbillies or rednecks, the very ones who slow down next to roadkill, contemplating if this will be their next meal. A poacher, who leaves the carcass in the ditch, is a being with no moral compass and no capacity for humanity or respect for life.

It is the Master at the Agricultural Training Centre, whose observations of rural life and of the young men who pass through his institute’s doors, who best captured the spirit of rural life at a point which struck the nearest to home. From the dyed in blue conservative politics to the casual disregard for life:

“Both groups are conservative to an amazing degree – I mean, considering how young they are. I asked my class the other day, ‘What about hanging?’ There were thirty boys in the class, all aged between seventeen and nineteen, and every one of them was in favour of hanging. It shook me. You find some funny things out. They all have a streak of cruelty. They kill in a way which would disturb the ordinary town boy – very few town boys have ever killed anything. But by the time he’s twenty a countryman will have killed a considerable number of animals. It doesn’t mean anything to them. It doesn’t mean much to me. I’m a countryman and I was brought up in an atmosphere of natural killing, on a stock farm you see the animals going away to slaughter. You see cows which you’ve milked for years and which you have named, and whom you’ve built up quite a little relationship, going off to the butcher and you don’t feel a thing. It is logical. The countryman has no reverence for life. Things are born, things die. All the time. Death is as familiar as birth. To take a murderer’s life is just sensible to them.”

The question of animal welfare and the ethics of intensive factory farming (which in the late 60’s Suffolk, is commented on as only starting out in its early stages), became a defining dilemma for the country veterinarian, who phrased the question as profits versus ethics. The country vet commented on the horrors of profit driven mutilation found in factory farms, to stop the animals from resorting to cannibalism and madness born out of the boredom and the inhumanity of their enclosures. Pigs who bite each other’s tails off. The practise of debeaking chickens to stop them from pecking and killing one another. There is no mention of grinding of male and unhealthy female chicks. Unable to produce eggs, they are considered a wasteful byproduct and put through an industrial grinder, where they are mulched into meal. Factory farming only capitalised on the inherent nihilism widespread within the agricultural community. The notion of a ‘family farm,’ now almost 60 years later, is reaching the point of extinction. Images of ‘mothers homemade chicken pot pies,’ are now just marketing campaigns, brands, and slogans. The cheery plump woman in the photo may have existed at one point in time, but not anymore. Now, its intensive and concentrated farming, whose images would be revolting to the average consumer, if they knew exactly where their eggs, meat, poultry, and dairy come from, and the conditions in which it was produced. This is not necessarily a criticism, it’s a reality. One which has subsequently wiped-out the former agriculture economy and culture Ronald Blythe originally traced, which at that time was experiencing a mass exodus. In its wake, the images of quaint country farms have been replaced by a faceless industrial complex.

My favourite sections of the book included “Four Ladies,” and “The Law.” In particular I found the observations by the Magistrate and the District Nurse, the most interesting. In the case of the District Nurse, there’s no attachment to the agricultural world. No discussion of the field work. The fragile tightwire act of farming as one battle against the weather and other obstacles. No, for the District Nurse, an outsider in every way, the obstacle was the people themselves. Those of Suffolk are an inward, secretive and suspicious lot. Despite this, she had supported their births and laid out their dead, and understood them better than most. While the Magistrate – who did her best to hide her social standings and better than attitudes – took her position seriously, but inflected a sense of social pity on those who faced the court. Still, when the Magistrate mentioned there is always that one family, immediately anyone who had any stint in the rural trenches, knew exactly what she was referring to. The peculiar ones. The pariah. The ones always on the border edges of decency and civility and for the record, didn’t give a damn. They reveled in their squalor and had no shame in their criminal dealings. These two women’s observations, brought at times refreshing outwardly perspectives on what village life is.

“Akenfield,” certainly maintain its subtext of: Portrait of an English Village, as this is exactly what it is, a portrait of an English village in a specific period of time. The winds of change are strong as they bellow and blow through the fields. The neo-feudal era is banished to the sands of time. People are no longer expected to be invisible in the presence of their social masters or superiors. There still, the countryside is drying up of its own stock. Home is home, but there are thoughts and questions of others skies and opportunities. America? Australia? These are no longer dreams, but entertained thoughts. It also captures the comic failings of the times, as noted in “The Forge,”:

“The blacksmith’s shop in most villages is now either a garage, a smart cottage called The Olde Forge or a forlorn lean-to still redolent of horse musk and iron, its roof gradually slithering down to the couch-grass mat which covers the yard.”

While the gentrification of the area, as noted by the Gardener, sees the newcomers – those city folk, who’ve come down for their own parcel or postage stamp of perceived paradise – have made life rather uninteresting, or at the very least, less elaborate. By stating “Their gardens look like shopping.” Which is not a stretch of the imagination, considering the estate garden he comes from. Ronald Blythe captures all the complexities of rural life. The neighbourliness, its own set of traditions and superstitions which carry on alongside the Christian faith. There is an awkward even bashful attitudes towards discussing politics or organizing labour openly; yet each of them will affirm they hold no fondness or dewy-eyed sentiment for the old ways – those are the worst ways, the hard ways. There is also the inherent secretiveness. “Akenfiled,” does not mine or seek to propose any lesson to be worked from the various lives on offer. What Ronald Blythe captured is so much more. Blythe captured the richness of these individuals lives against a changing rural backdrop. A time that was and will never be again, but thanks to “Akenfield,” this portraiture of place and people can be revisited and reviewed. While, at times I used the book to enforce and confirm my own held prejudices against rural life; the Poet in “Not by Bread Alone,” provides enough counter argument to my own entrenched views:

“When I was a boy I lived in a country suburb of London — it was still possible to talk of a suburb being in the country then. After Oxford, I worked in London, where I wrote a poetry of despair. It was a continuous cry for what I had lost, for the hills and fields, and the vixen wood, with the dog-fox barking at night. I imagined myself dying inside and so I came to this village to find my health. My wholeness. That is what I am here. It was not my village but to say that I had returned to it seemed a true way of describing what had happened to me. Suffolk amazed me — the great trees, the towering old buildings soaring out of the corn. The huge clear spaces. I am now at home here. I know everybody and everybody knows me. Words have meaning for me here. I am lucky, I came here to get better but I have in fact been re-born.”

Ronald Blythe’s celebration of rural life is without compare. “Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village,” captures the remarkable textures of lives lived within the English countryside. Lives which were then being transformed and phased out. It’s a remarkable book to sit back and read, not only as a sense of history, but Blythe’s ability to capture how the sense of place inherently kneads itself into one’s identity. Rather like the saddler comments on his own craft: “We worked the fat in with a bone, just as a soldier bones his boots,” – the specificities of place does much the same, and Ronald Blythe captured that testimony in “Akenfield,” with an assurance that is best described as environmental truth.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Leonard Nolens Dies Aged 78

Hello Gentle Reader,

During this festive season and the distorting sprint between Christmas and New Years, it is easy to miss the news or recent departing’s. As in the case of Leonard Nolens, the renowned Belgian Flemish poet and diarist, who for years was speculated as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in the early years of the previous decade was considered a high contender. After what was considered a perceived leak, Nolens name was mentioned politely, but the speculative fervor had waned. Despite this, Leonard Nolens is one of the most influential Flemish poets, having received a variety of accolades throughout his career including the Dutch Literature Prize which was presented to him from then Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who praised Leonard Nolens and his poetry, commenting on his ability to make Dutch sing again. As a poet, Nolens’ work is noted for its complexity and polyphonic nature, exploring the sense of self, reality and poetic creation, and how easy these two realms meld into each other, with poetry inflecting reality. Early poetry collections are regarded for their experimental leanings, difficulty and otherwise closed off nature. While in later collections with maturity, Nolens moved towards a poetic vision that was less baroque and ornate, instead embracing a sober, level and even toned style reminiscent of an approachable spoken word format. Despite this shift this poetic shift, Leonard Nolens is by all accounts still considered a renowned and all-encompassing poetry, which is rivaled by its uncompromising vision.

Rest in Peace Leonard Nolens.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– XLVII –

Don’t mistake the end of the road as the end of the world. Take a turn, take a detour, or forge a new path. It's not over.

Tom Stoppard Dies Aged 88

Hello Gentle Reader,

There are few English language playwrights capable of moving between literary preoccupation and popular appeal quite like Tom Stoppard. Though Alan Bennett and the late Harold Pinter and Edward Albee make close seconds; Tom Stoppard remains singular as one of the most original dramatists of the mid to late 20^th century and early 21^st century, who was able to move between both writing for stage and screen with remarkable ease. Finding a home in these two mediums, who despite their similarities, are ultimately vastly different, delineated not only on the grounds of production but the intimacy and limitations of scope, only showcases Stoppard’s remarkable ability to adapt to different modes of presentation, but maintaining his signature love of the English language, and ensuring the language of either performance would always be polished and top notched, regardless if it was being performed by treading on the boards or broadcasted from the screen. Tom Stoppard’s work delighted in juxtaposition. By soldering two unrelated or oppositional concepts together, Stoppard explored philosophical complexities and conundrums with wit and ease, that was both intelligent as it was entertaining. In one of his personal favourite plays, “Arcadia,” Stoppard explored 19^th century landscaping gardening and chaos theory, by contrasting two different time periods and two different sets of characters, and exploring the fundamental elements of order and chaos as unseen influential forces that continue ripple throughout time, further elevated by Stoppard’s ability to take complex concepts and spinning them into a narrative that continually flutters between tragedy and comedy in equal breaths. Still, Tom Stoppard’s big break and often regarded as his crowning achievement remains the classic “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” a marvelous absurdist tragicomedy with an existentialist bent (in other words very mid-century modern), they play takes two minor characters (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) from “Hamlet,” the two courtly sycophants and agents of Claudius and presents their outcome from their own perspective, as their fates already codified in “Hamlet.” “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” remains a classic dramatic text of the mid to late 20^th century theatre. Stoppard’s credits in film are equally wide, including a credit to the Oscar winning screenplay “Shakespeare in Love,” “Empire of the Sun,” and “Brazil.” Beyond his credits for credits for stage and screen, Tom Stoppard was remembered fondly by friends, colleagues and admirers for his generosity in spirit, and continued interest and support of new talents.

Rest in Peace, Tom Stoppard, a true legend of the stage and screen.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– XLVI –

As you get older prepare to be greeted by the following two greetings: You again? And: You're still alive?

The Booker Prize Winner 2025

Hello Gentle Reader,

This year’s Booker Winning author is the Canadian born Hungarian-British writer David Szalay with his novel, “Flesh,” which was considered by many to be the dark horse contender on this years Booker Prize, with Andrew Miller with his novel, “The Land of Winter,” and Kiran Desai with her novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” considered the favourites for this year’s prize.

“Flesh,” has been described as one of the more innovative and compelling novels on this year’s shortlist. In the novel David Szalay traces the arc of one man’s life is made even more compelling by Szalay hollowing out the interiority of the subject. Throughout “Flesh,” readers are never intimately acquainted with the thoughts, feelings, motivations, opinions, or perspectives of the subject, István. Instead, István takes shape only through the reactions, desires, and fears of those in his orbit. “Flesh,” capitalizes on this sense of ‘flatness,’ or minimal dimensional perspective and instead amplifies the physical experience of existence. “Flesh,” is certainly an interesting and compelling novel. Its singularity was often mentioned and discussed by critics and reviewers leading up to the prize, but none were capable of describing the novels originality in full.

The chair of this year’s judges, Roddy Doyle, highlighted David Szalay’s choice of subject matter, as these are individuals who are not always granted the privilege of a literary perspective. But more importantly, Doyle and the other judges were all in agreeance that “Flesh,” was a novel that stuck out for its inventiveness. A testament to Szalay’s literary skill, is the novel’s ability to employee the inherent white space of books and incorporate them into the novels structure. If it is one thing the judges agreed on though with the novel, is it is nothing like they had read prior.

Warmest congratulations to David Szalay, “Flesh,” certainly sounds like one of the more compelling and interesting novels of late.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

– XLV –

Sentimentality is the lowest form of affection.

My Sister’s Blue Eyes

Hello Gentle Reader,

Any bookstore – chain or independent, used or otherwise – or library, will inform even a casual browser or bystander, that there is no shortage of a variety of writers at work or options of books. It’s an endless cornucopia of writers, each with their own trademark. Their own style or school or allegiance to group, either formally or informally formed or one forced upon them by academics or critical analysis due to association. There are writers of epicist traditions, and there are writers of quiet dispositions. There are formulaic writers. The ones who have discovered the chemical composition or mathematical computations required to spin a compelling enough yarn to entice readers. Those books fly off the shelves. They entertain as intended. Afterwards they are discarded. They can be found sprinkled through rummage and jumble sales, untouched and unwanted. While others have since been jammed in free libraries in neighbourhood’s or donated to schools or other institutions. It’s dreadful to think how many end up in landfills or recycling centres. They are cheap paperbacks, produced quickly to fly off the shelves and the distance, but not to last it. They are bubblegum reads. Cheap thrills. Tawdry romances. Nothing regarding substance. Then there are writers of serious concerns. You know, the ones who think of themselves as the real deals. Solemn and reverent. They’re writing the great American novel; or they’re expanding the possibilities of language; or they’re attempting to push the limitations of narrative via language or form; they write to explore moral conundrums and philosophical ideals, creating fictional laboratories in which to examine their hypothesis; while there are others who view true literature having a specific social responsibility, providing commentary on politics or social issues. Great writers, however, are those who can capture it all, without the added pretense and pomposity. The underrated writers, are those of a quiet disposition, who are easily overlooked. These writers are not ostentatious or exuberant in their showmanship. They merely get on with it. The Québecois writer, Jacques Poulin, was one such writer.

Reading and returning to Jacques Poulin, is akin to encountering a distant and old friend again. Picking up were you left off, even after having lost touch for years. There is a sense of comfort and familiarity in returning to a Poulin novel. It’s rather like the comfort of re-watching or rediscovering a favourite or beloved television series or film. Rather like putting on a pair of reliable sturdy old shoes or slipping into a warm coat, the ease in how you fit in keeps you there. All the while new details emerge. Overlooked tropes and delightful particulars; mere tidbits that went unnoticed the first time, can be now be appreciated within the larger context. Rather like revisited landscapes who succumb to the seasons and time, Jacques Poulin’s novels act as photographs, encapsulating and carving out the piece of time, archiving it from the corrosion of Chronos. In the works of Poulin, there will always be the warming archetypes and comforts that are leisurely spiced, kneaded, and woven throughout his novels. They can be cats. Testimonials and admiration regarding Ernest Hemingway; though Poulin is known, however, to broaden his purview in appreciation for those otherwise ‘solid,’ American writers, who are part of that uniquely American pantheon of 20^th century fiction: F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger and Raymond Carver, being his personal favourites. There are mysterious women, whose affections slip in through the narrative, they are gentle and comforting, with Poulin never lingering over anything that can be described as overtly erotic in nature. No Poulin novel would be complete without the aloof and somewhat mystical appearance of cats, be it the titular cats of “Mister Blue,” or “Wild Cat,” or the detail of cats drawn to the bookmobile in “Autumn Rounds,” because the mobile library was once a milk truck, and the cats can still sniff out the ghostly reminisce of milk. Jacques Poulin though was a celebrator of his home in Quebec, be it the Vieux-Québec or charting the primeval and wonderous St. Lawrence with all of its islands, such as the magnificent Île d'Orléans or the Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Magdalen Islands). Poulin ensured the landscape of Quebec always invigorated the pages of his novels, providing the necessary charm and local flare to his work, all the while celebrating his Quebecois heritage. The St. Lawrence and her archipelago are the beautiful solitary backdrops of both, “Mister Blue,” and the heartbreaking parabolic novel, “Spring Tides,” where the utopian island retreat of Teddy Bear, is gradually eroded and defaced by a continual onslaught of new arrivals. While in “Autumn Rounds,” the Quebec Countryside and the St. Lawrence’s North Shore are at once both backdrop and travelogue, as ‘The Driver,’ accompanies a French carnival troupe on what is his last tour as driver of the traveling mobile library.

Unsurprisingly, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” has all of these qualities. Reading this novel was in many ways a homecoming to familiar ground. You find yourself treading the same trafficked and time worn floorboards. You know where the boards creak. You wonder if the dripping tap has been fixed. The paint colour has changed and there are new curtains, but overall, you feel right at home. “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” opens serendipitously with the narrator (Jimmy) walking down rue Saint-Jean to leave Vieux- Québec, when he’s startled by the warmth and appeal of a bookstore. Jacques Poulin casually sets the scene with the warm light radiating from the window, and a stack of books set out like a lighthouse, complete with a lantern on top, as if this makeshift literary bookish tower is meant to cut through the late winter to early spring fog and entice customers in. Inevitably it does. Upon entering, Jimmy finds the bookstore changed from his last visit. While he does recall he needs to go up three steps into the main store, where he’s greeted by a potbellied woodburning stove, whose warmth radiates throughout the store. The layout and the organization though have once again shifted. There are no bestsellers right next to the door, instead it’s a haphazard state of unfamiliarity. For the initiated it’s a literary treasure trove of discoveries. For Jimmy, however, it’s a jumbled mess and when he asks the proprietor of the store – a certain Jack Waterman, a fictional author – what principles are used to govern his classification system, the response is:

            “The principle of absolute disorder.”

It is confirmed, your truly in Jacques Poulin territory now. What follows suit is the genesis of an eccentric family unit comprised of Jimmy, who having the talent of hearing the murmur of books according to Jack, becomes the new store clerk; Jack Waterman, the stately and aged author who has been an inspiration to younger writers, supporting himself now with translations and his bookstore; the elusive mysterious sister Mistassini or Mist as its shortened, and of course Charabia the cat. Short vignette chapters gradually reveal their intimate world, and the shadow of ‘Eisenhower’s Disease,’ (Alzheimer’s disease) as Jack calls it that forms the great drama of the novel, as Jack’s faculties are routinely under siege and submerged by the disease eroding his memory, and slowly shipwrecking him from reality and the world. Jack is prepared for this complete erasure of himself, and intends to commit suicide first as a mercy to save his loved ones from watching his slow disintegration into oblivion. Despite the threat and reality of Jack’s condition, the three live in relative harmony, with Jimmy encouraged to go to Paris and follow in the footsteps of Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce. It comes as no surprise to find Jacques Poulin taking the time to provide a bit of appreciation to Ernest Hemmingway in, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” especially when admiring Hemmingway’s signature style. However, unlike other novels by Poulin, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” shows an exceptionally amount of generosity to other writers, not just Hemmingway and others of the lost generation. Poulin mentions fellow Franco-Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy, and when Jimmy is in Paris there’s a few lines dedicated to Françoise Sagan and Patrick Modiano:

“During literary programs on TV, I much preferred Sagan or Modiano, both of them rather pathetic, she because she muttered incomprehensibly, he because he never finished his sentences, there was fog in his eyes, and he seemed lost, like ghosts that haunted his novels.”

In this same chapter, Jimmy goes to great comedic and conspiratorial lengths to get one of Jack’s novels read by a French critic and writer. A haughty literary star, which Jimmy couldn’t see what all the hoopla and fanfare was over. Regardless, Jack asked the favour, and so at a café Jimmy ensures the novel is position to be picked up by the unexpecting critic. Naturally, the critic does indeed pick it up, but after realizing its written by a Québécois writer, the novel is returned to Jimmy, but with praise about the opening sentences. This was particularly interesting part of, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” as I am unfamiliar with how the periphery French language writers from Québec or Morocco or Senegal are received in France, and how continental French language authors are received in return. Though my understanding is now the relationship between these two distinct literary cultures is one of amicable respect, with many Québécois writers (Kim Thúy, Dany Laferrière, and Aki Shimazaki) incorporating an international or outward looking perspectives to their work. Regardless, it is interesting to see Jacques Poulin move outside of Québec for a few chapters, to provide further insight into French cultural dynamics, as Poulin himself lived in Paris, France for many years before returning to Québec.

As for literary style, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” continues the tradition of Jacques Poulin’s literary style, one emulating the streamlined ‘closed fist,’ punchy prose of Hemmingway and the reductionist clarity of Raymond Carver. What separates Poulin’s prose from being dourly beige and grey as former’s adherence to minimalist disciple, is there is a continual effervescent quality to it. A buoyant pleasure rippling beneath the surface, rather like a gentle and bucolic breeze in spring stirring meadowlands and new blossoms, as in the following passage:

“To be sure that Mist didn’t go directly to Jack’s place after our walk, I led her in the opposite direction to rue des Remparts, towards the west. I took her across Place d’Youville and the gloomy boulevard Dufferin, then we stepped into the neighbourhood of Saint-Jean-Baptise. The area lacked trees and green spaces, but to compensate and rest our eyes when we were strolling the terraced streets on the slope that led to the Lower Town, at every intersection we were able to admire the vast carpet of light that spread as night was falling from Limoilou to the feet of the Laurentians.”   

One complaint, however, with the novel is the discomfort I got from reading what can only be described as a vaguely incestuous relationship between Jimmy and Mistassini. While I am able to theorize and ascertain via some of the text that perhaps Mistassini and Jimmy are not necessarily siblings as a blood relation, but merely siblings within the sense of familiar adoption or youthful pact. Regardless, the relationships physical intimacy – however loving it is – is off putting and does cause for a few shivers to zip down the spine.

“My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” is a delightful return to the charming literary world of Jacques Poulin, a writer whose never solemn, but does hold reverence for literature and philosophy. Poulin just does it without wrapping himself in pretentiousness and imperious attitudes, as so many others do. Despite the underlying current of melancholy brought on by Jack Waterman’s gradual obsolesce via his Eisenhower’s Disease, Poulin carefully manages this to ensure it does not become increasingly melancholic, mooring the novel into the realms of pessimism and drudgery. Do not mistake, however, Poulin’s lightness of touch with superficiality or no depth, as Poulin has proven himself to be a consummate writer whose work allows plenty of room to breathe enough insinuation, allowing reading to fill in any missing information. Returning to Jacques Poulin is a wonderous feeling. Its settling down into a cushiony arm chair for the evening and being swept away in a good book. Reading, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” was at times slightly sad, as I know the author died this year in late August at the age of 87; but being able to get my hands on another one of his novels, is a remarkable way to once again revisit this writer and his work. Admirers of Jacques Poulin and his work won’t be disappointed by, “My Sister’s Blue Eyes,” though they should be forewarned to steady and steel themselves regarding the relationship between Jimmy and Mistassini.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Zoë Wicomb Dies Aged 76

Hello Gentle Reader,

The renowned South African writer and academic, Zoë Wicomb died at the age of 76. As a writer, Zoë Wicomb traced the complexities and instability of South Africa as it transitioned from authoritarian apartheid to the state it is today, but also how the remnants of apartheid continue to haunt and linger in contemporary South African society. The novel “David’s Story,” set in the closing chapters of the former apartheid regime. The novel traces the story of David Dirkse, whose life is moved to the ground level, after previously working clandestine organizations and movement to topple the apartheid government and system. Now with the African National Congress legal and legitimate, there is a dawning new South Africa on the horizon, while the previous one gradually fades in its twilight hours. Now with legitimacy granted to previous outlawed organizations, David finds himself with time to trace his own heritage, and the complexity of coloured identity. Political violence, however, is the norm not the exception, and soon enough David’s momentary peace is shattered when he is listed as a target on a political assassination list. What follows are questions of political emancipation and freedom. “David’s Story,” is a complex novel encompassing political analysis and thriller, while questioning the reliability of historical records during times of crisis and political instability. “Playing in the Light,” Zoë Wicomb continues to examine and autopsy the post-apartheid state, the lingering racial tensions and attitudes still maintained or held onto, it explores the reckoning Marion has when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission dredges up information which bring into question her own identity, her family history, proving that in the new state of South Africa, personal interests and national politics are not always delineated. Zoë Wicomb’s work continually examined the complexities of the personal, national, and political in the post-apartheid South Africa. How the legacy of historical injustices and institutional racism reverberates throughout all society and infects personal and familiar relationships; in addition to other themes of family secrets, exile, motherhood, the weight of history and its veracity. Zoë Wicomb’s ability to include the personal life and domestic scenes as they relate to political discourse and change, are key components to her work being viewed as multilayered, grounding extraordinary change within palpable, in addition to her ability to masterfully employ and incorporate metafictional techniques to fragment and reexamine perspectives from multiple lenses and points of view and question truth as it is and as its testified. In short, Zoë Wicomb was a talented and complex writer, whose work continually examined both apartheid and the reckoning of a post-apartheid South Africa.

Rest in Peace, Zoë Wicomb.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Post-Nobel Prize in Literature 2025 Thoughts

Hello Gentle Reader,

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 was awarded to the Hungarian writer Krasznahorkai László with the citation:

“for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

The announcement of the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature remains fashioned into a particular Swedish adoration for procedure as virtue. At 1:00pm (CEST) the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, comes through the beautiful white doors of the Swedish Academy, takes his position behind the little white picket pen and greets those assembled, welcoming them to Swedish Academy and then announces this year’s laureate in literature. This year, however, Mats Malm does not bow out to Anders Olsson Chair of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee, who in years past read a prepared statement on the laureate and their literary work. Due to Olsson being ill, this task fell to fellow Committee member, Steve Sem-Sandberg.

Anders Olsson’s recitations are longwinded lectures. They are dry sermons. Quite positively calcifying when viewed against previous award announcements by previous Permanent Secretaries: Horace Engdahl, Peter Englund, and Sara Danius. Back then, the Permanent Secretary managed the announcement solely. Announcing the winner and their citation in the variety of languages they have command of. Afterwards they would engage in a short and enlightening interview. Here the Permanent Secretary would provide a brief overview of the authors work and a few glowing remarks, before recommending a couple of works for interested readers. Anders Olsson either lacks the charisma or the interest in engaging in this impromptu form of media relations. Instead, Olsson comes prepared and delivers the decision with academic authority. Highlighting a few important works, discussing the writer’s oeuvre and commenting on their themes. It’s not a matter that Anders Olsson way of handling the years announcement is bad. Its just not as exciting. It’s more enduring than elating.

For example, when Horace Engdahl announced Doris Lessing as the laureate for 2007, Engdahl paused the announcement to allow the cheers ring out in the Stockholm Stock Exchange Building. There are so few cheers now. Afterwards, in an interview, Engdahl did his best to summarize Lessing’s long literary career, from her debut novel, “The Grass is Singing,” to her monumental, “The Children of Violence Series,” – which Engdahl described as her magnum opus – all the way to the second peak defining Doris Lessing’s bibliography with her autobiographies. Engdahl couldn’t comment on the suggestion that Doris Lessing had been a writer discussed on and off for decades prior, but he did take the opportunity to highlight Lessing’s command of the short story form, which Engdahl noted is often overlooked when compared to her large and engrossing novels.

To reiterate: the current prize announcement format being divided up amongst the Permanent Secretary and the Nobel Committee, fragments the event. It brings into question the role of the Permanent Secretary when compared to the Nobel Committee and the Chairman. Mats Malm is routinely criticized for being wooden and apprehensive when facing the media. No doubt, Malm is an accomplished administrator and academic, but a component of the Permanent Secretaryship is media relations. Then again, perhaps if Mats Malm was actually granted the opportunity to conduct the announcement in a singular capacity, confidence and some charisma could be tended too; and to put it frankly, Anders Olsson is not in possession of these qualities either.

This year, however, with Steve Sem-Sandberg filling in for Anders Olsson, there was a slight injection of warmth. This could come from the fact that Sem-Sandberg is an admirer of Krasznahorkai László, or he just has a bit more ember to his stove then say Mats Malm or Anders Olsson. Yet, this second part of the announcement, whereby members of the Nobel Committee take their position in the white pen, is awkward. In this instance, Steve Sem-Sandberg read through the pre-composed bio-bibliography by Anders Olsson, while fellow committee member Ellen Mattson stands in waiting. It’s a bit awkward to watch. I feel for Ellen Mattson obviously, as the optics can be viewed that she’s being employed to placate or ward off any criticism that can be aimed at the academy for not valuing (or at least appearing to) female voices. In the end, both Steve Sem-Sandberg and Ellen Mattson would facilitate a brief question and answer period. Steve Sem-Sandberg in English and Ellen Mattson in Swedish. Regardless the current announcement set up is logistically awkward and unfocused. Returning the master of ceremonies responsibilities back to the Permanent Secretary would solve a lot of this disjointedness. While it is understandable that perhaps many members of the academy or the Nobel Committee, would like a kick at the can, the current itineration is missing the necessary spark to liven up the event. Instead, it reduces the announcement to a pastiche relay race lacking a cohesive narrative thread to sustain viewers attention or their engagement.

As for this years Nobel Laureate in Literature, Krasznahorkai László, the reaction and reception is universally applauded and acclaimed. Unsurprising, as Krasznahorkai has been considered a perennial contender for the prize for years now, right alongside his countryman Nádas Péter. In a manner similar to Jon Fosse, bestowing the Nobel Prize in Literature on to Krasznahorkai László may not be viewed as surprising or original in scope, and can be dismissed by others as expected, even parading into predictable territory. At the same time, however, the Swedish Academy is routinely condemned and criticized for overlooking or failing to award titans of literature. In recent memory alone this includes: Ismail Kadare, Antonio Tabucchi, Philip Roth, Milan Kundera, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. These are but a handful of recent writers who died without the prize, and had long been rumoured as perennial candidates. It is unfair position then to critise the Swedish Academy on both fronts. One for awarding obscure writers with limited readership but critical acclaim – Elfriede Jelinek, J.M.G Le Clézio, Herta Müller, Patrick Modiano – one year. Then on the second front, critise them for awarding globally recognized and lauded talent – V.S. Naipaul, J.M. Coetzee, Jon Fosse or Krasznahorkai László. One can always lament that there is only one prize and many deserving candidates and writers for the award; but, inevitably, the Nobel Prize in Literature will always fall short. This year, however, the consensus certainly is one of joy. The Swedish Academy has decided to bestow the Nobel Prize in Literature onto a writer whose literary vision is absolutely singular. There are few writers writing and working now, who are as uncompromising in their literary vision as Krasznahorkai László, whose work remains complex, formidable, and inflexible in literary principle. The rewards, however, as any reader of Krasznahorkai László will always be there, which is why his readership has always been cultish and fanatical in the early years, before entering the literary mainstream and achieving universal critical acclaim.

In awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to Krasznahorkai László, the Swedish Academy has also done a necessary course correction on breaking up the stylistic monotony of the previous Nobel Laureates. While, Jon Fosse and Han Kang, where considered attempts at moving away from the autumnal austerity and clinical acute literary language of earlier laureates Louise Glück and Annie Ernaux, with Fosse’s rhythmic repetitious tidal language and Han’s brittle lyricism. Still, one would not call either Jon Fosse or Han Kang exceptionally innovative writers in stylistic terms, at least not when compared to Krasznahorkai. A defining feature of Krasznahorkai László’s novels is his magmatic text. Pages and pages of dense black text, with sentences running on in an unspooling labyrinth. Readers will always find themselves swept away in the current of Krasznahorkai’s torrential and unrelenting text, oozing forth without fail, into an apocalyptical landscape, be it a failing and collapsing Soviet era collective farm; an insular village tucked away in the Carpathian Mountains, whose residents stand on the precipice of anarchy, succumbing to their baseline chaotic and violent tendencies, all that is required is the necessary catalyst to ignite this degradation; or a German village besieged by violence, arson, murder, vandalism, and the sustained paranoid surety of the end of everything, but also the strange amalgamation between this bleak finality and the beauty of art, the sanctuary of it. After reading “The Melancholy of Resistance,” the American writer and critic, Susan Sontag, styled Krasznahorkai László the “master of the apocalypse,” and this crowning title follows with ominous airs, both enticing and warning readers of what to expect. Krasznahorkai’s world is always already dystopian with an ominous understanding that the collapse is not happening, but has yet to happen. The decline, the decomposition, the decay of everything is the ultimate and final state of everything. Krasznahorkai’s writing is not polite in or poetically waxing about themes of impermanence or absence. No, Krasznahorkai’s vision is the preoccupation turned premonition of the end. This has always been the defining feature of Krasznahorkai László’s bibliography. It picks up after T.S. Eliots, “The Wasteland,” and surveys subsequent cycle of new wastelands created in the collapse of civility and perceived political and social order, and the cosmological collapse.

In their extended review and presentation of Krasznahorkai László, the Swedish Academy highlighted Krasznahorkai’s lineage to Central European literature, with particular reference to the literary forebearers, Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. Especially in relation to a fixation on the absurdity of existence. The fallacy of meaning. Our communal condition I attributing meaning to circumstances and events, even when none exist. This is the gallows humour of Krasznahorkai, which follows in the tradition of Kafka and Bernhard. Finally following suit, Krasznahorkai has a particular penchant for the grotesque and exaggerated, showcasing how easy it is for people to step outside of their civility and devolve into their instinctual and primal forms, when the conditions present themselves. False prophets and conmen, each come with their greasy promises of saviour, but ultimately, they lead their congregation into further decay and ruin, or rob their customers blind, leaving them with piss in a bottle, marketed as a tonic and cure-all. Then, Krasznahorkai László changes direction once more. The novel “A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East,” and the fragmented novel or short story collection, “Seiobo There Below,” begin to examine the remedial qualities of art, beauty, and pure aesthetic pleasures within the world, providing if not complete sanctuary from the sustained and expedited march towards destruction, then at the very least, a point of reprieve. Late modernist hellscapes of “Satantango,” “The Melancholy of Resistance,” “War & War,” and “Herscht 07769,” has now evolved into something more interior, mor abstract, philosophical and meditative, captured within the complex, convoluted and intricate magmatic prose that has come to define Krasznahorkai’s work. Now, however, the sentences fold in and onto each other, repetitions spur new digressions and negations. Admirers of complex and innovative prose, could not get enough of it. If Krasznahorkai’s literary talents were even in doubt or in dispute, they were quickly quieted. “Seibo There Below,” is beloved and admired for the author’s apparent final release of his style, allowing his sentences to continue to swell and expand course forward without barrier or dam and flood the pages with and relentless torrent of thoughts, sensations, observations, reflections, admirations, digressions, and philosophical treaties.  

As a laureate, Krasznahorkai László is similar to Jon Fosse, in his work is free of political association. This means, Krasznahorkai’s award is free from the usual questions of political maneuvering and questioning. While, the Swedish Academy maintains that all their decisions and deliberations are exempt from political motivations, it is not difficult to corollate some inference of political gestures with some of the awards. With a rise of a tolerance towards totalitarianism, an upwelling of violence as a means of political solution, terrorism as political discourse; the apocalyptical vision of Krasznahorkai’s oeuvre is the prophetic vision and testimony of the time, as the world slides further and further into madness and violent lunacy. When the basic tenements of democracy are under siege, not only from external forces, but growing autocratic insurrectionist forces, by radical and incompetent individuals, Krasznahorkai provides an increasingly alarming literary portrait of similar events, in more dystopian and allegorical landscapes. These are not novels to provide comfort, and they are no longer issuing warnings. They threaten to become prophetic visions of an impending all consuming destructive end. Choosing to award Krasznahorkai László the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy has acknowledged not only a masterful visionary writer, but also one with prescient understanding of the self-destructive impulses that reside at the core of the human condition. What is an award though if it only acknowledges the forewarning of our inevitable destruction, be it through divine exhaustion in the form of the rapture, or our own manufactured climate catastrophe. Afterall, prophesying the end of the world, has been a human proclivity since we first gained the capacity for language and communication. Therefore, it is necessary for the Swedish Academy to also acknowledge and elevate Krasznahorkai’s interest and literary ability to not only create exceptional works of literary beauty, but also affirm and reaffirm the power of art in all of its forms.

In a manner similar to 2023 and 2015, the Nobel Prize in Literature lands solid footing. While a few may gripe about the award going to an ‘obvious,’ candidate, the award itself is one of merit and settled. If the only criticism is its obvious, then these are but minor blemishes that can be brushed aside. Krasznahorkai László is an exceptional and talented writer. If anything, the Nobel Prize in literature for this year is at rest and at home, with a writer of purely literary merit. When it came to speculation about Krasznahorkai and the Nobel Prize in Literature, the prevailing thought was always a matter of when, not if. Though it was always tempered by caution, as many great writers were and are always being tempted by the notion of ‘when,’ not ‘if,’ and this includes the perennially neglected Adonis. While I recognize, I am not the ideal reader for Krasznahorkai’s dense, uncompromising, torrential, lava flowing oozing novels, I am capable of recognizing the merits and greatness of Krasznahorkai’s work. This years Nobel Prize in Literature has certainly been granted to a writer of brilliant achievements. It leaves me curious to what kind of deliberations the Swedish Academy engaged in when discussing his novels which move between apocalyptic visions to detailed digressions of aesthetic appreciation and wonderment. When deliberating Samuel Beckett, members of the Swedish Academy viewed his plays and novels as being in complete contrast to Alfred Nobel’s will of an ‘ideal direction,’ for their morbid sense of humour and nihilistic landscapes. Did this assembled version of the Swedish Academy face the same discussions? Did they attempt to reconcile the differences between Krasznahorkai’s view of the human condition, to that of Alfred Nobel’s willed stipulation of ‘ideal direction,’? Or was the vagueness of the notion of what constitutes an ideal direction, abandoned in favour of reviewing the author on purely literary terms. Afterall, Krasznahorkai László had won the Man Booker International Prize, the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the Best Translated Book Award (twice), and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. This is not a writer of no merit. Regardless, the decision is welcomed and breathes new life into the award, disrupting the conformity of writers who write in subdued and quiet voices, and instead celebrates a writer who surveys and sails amongst the cosmos. If there is any complaint on my part is perhaps, it’s getting a bit old that the Nobel Prize in Literature continues to alternate between a man and a woman writer, and feels the need to return to Europe to reset before moving into different literary landscapes. Still if this is how it needs to be for now, then I am more then content that it went to Krasznahorkai László.

This years Nobel Prize in Literature is well deserved. Warmest congratulations to Krasznahorkai László, this will certainly be a popular award for decades to come.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary