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| Sunday, 1 June 2003 |
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Compiled by Farah Macan Markar "The story of an African farm" by Olive Schreiner "Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain. In the farm-house, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant' Sannie, the Boer-woman, rolled heavily in her sleep. She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes; and the night was warm and the room close, and she dreamed bad dreams..." Two cousins grow up in the 1860s on a lonely Bible dominated farm in the thirsty mountain veld. Em is fat, sweet and contented, a born housewife; Lyndall, clever, restless, beautiful...and doomed. Their childhood is disrupted by a bombastic Irishman, Bonaparte Blenkins, who claims blood ties with Wellington and Queen Victoria and so gains uncanny influence over the girls' gross, stupid stepmother... As the story of Em and Lyndall's two careers-both in their way tragic yet fulfilled-is taken to its end, we learn not merely of a backwater in colonial history but of the whole human condition. ----- "The Trumpet-Major" by Thomas Hardy "In the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast amount of soldiering going on in the country was a cause of much trembling to the sex, there lived in a village near the Wessex coast two ladies of good report, though unfortunately of limited means. The elder was a Mrs Martha Garland, a landscape-painter's widow, and the other was her only daughter Anne." Anne Garland lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday. She is wooed by three men: the stupid coarse Festus Derriman, a man with expectations; John Loveday, the quiet, thoughtful trumpet-major; and Bob his brother, a sailor whose heart isn't as faithful as it should have been. In the course of the story, Anne has to overcome many obstacles and hazards before she marries the man of her choice. ------ "The Birds" and other stories by Daphne du Maurier "The birds had been more restless than ever this fall of the year, the agitation more marked because the days were still. As the tractor traced its path up and down the western hills, the figure of the farmer silhouetted on the driving-seat, the whole machine and the man upon it would be lost momentarily in the great cloud of wheeling, crying birds. There were many more than usual, Nat was sure of this. Always, in Autumn, they followed the plough, but not in great flocks like these, nor with such clamour..." Daphne du Maurier has a rare gift for dragging up those irrational fears that lurk just behind the smooth plaster of existence. In "The Birds" she somehow lends probability to an impossibility which is nearly too fearful to imagine. United by mad hatred the birds-the gulls, finches, crows, and tits-have combined to wipe out humanity. This strange, haunting fantasy has been chosen by Alfred Hitchcock for the making of a horror film. ----- "Tom Brown's Schooldays" by Thomas Hughes Tom Brown's transformation from timid, homesick schoolboy to robust, manly student is an enduringly popular classic that has defined the upper-class schoolboy of the nineteenth century to the world. When Tom Brown leaves his Berkshire home for Rugby, he is a nervous outsider, unfamiliar with the boisterous games and strict discipline of the public-school system. Suffering bitterly at the hands of the cowardly, sneering bully Flashman, Tom's physical courage, sportsmanship, loyalty and patriotism-qualities encouraged by the much-revered headmaster-make him a hero. Hughes drew heavily on his own schooldays to create "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and in doing so condemned the bullying and praised the qualities that prevailed. His most famous work created real, believable characters in Tom, Flashman, East, and their companions, and exerted a strong influence on the public-school ethos of the last century. ---- "Shardik" by Richard Adams In this brilliant second novel, the author of "Watership Down" unfolds a powerful saga of suffering, fire and war, as Shardik, the giant bear brings truth to the land of the Ortelgans "She said nothing, only standing submissively, her wrists tied together with a soaked and filthy bandage. Her eyes were gazing past him at the hills and at first he thought that she must be unaware of his presence. Then, with a conclusive and sceptical glance, like that of some shrewd peasant woman in the market, she looked into his face and raised her eye-brows, as much as to say, "And have you finished now, my child?" "You bitch!" cried Ta-Kominion. "I'll strangle you!". He wrenched at the bandage; and the deep, suppurating wound along his sword arm, which for more than two days had been pouring poison into his body, burst open upon the rain-pitted dust of the track where he lay. For a moment he jerked his head up, then fell back and opened his eyes, crying, "Zelda!". But it was Kelderek whom he saw bending over him. ---- "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is James Joyce's magnificent and now classic evocation of a Catholic boyhood in Ireland, and the struggle through sin and sanctity towards self-expression. "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a macaw coming down along the road and this macaw that was coming down along the road met a nice little boy named baby tuckoo... His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt. "O'the wild rose blossoms On the little green place" He sang that song. That was his song. "O' the green wothe botheth". When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell..." |
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