The Amnesia Clinic by James Scudamore (2006) pub.Harcourt

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A story of two schoolboys in Ecuador, one a 15-year-old British ex-pat the other the son of  a wealthy Ecuadorian family who lives with his uncle. They challenge each other by telling preposterous stories with Fabian's stories a form of bragging about his family. Fabian lives with Uncle Suarez in a gated compound and on visits there Anthony enjoys the licence to drink and smoke given to Fabian - as long as they don't go too far - which is what permissive adults usually say and not helpful!
Throughout there is some mystery about Fabian's parents. They were involved in a road accident and it seems that his father was killed. Fabian seems to believe that his mother is still alive. When Anthony comes up with a tale

The Adventures of Harry Rochester by Herbert Strang (1944) OUP

'Herbert Strang' is the one name for two men who from 1903 for forty years wrote books for boys.

Each page of this book has a title referring to the content below it on the page. I didn't even notice this until I had nearly finished the book. You don't look at the space at the top of each page, do you, when you read? It is usually an empty space. But not in this book. Once I found this page title I realised its usefulness. It is a summary that guides you to skip a page here and there without missing much. Writers are only human. Not all of their tens of  thousands of words are needed to understand and enjoy the story. And, of course, readers are also only human. An episode in a story may be interesting to one reader but not to another. You don't have to read every word to enjoy a book.

Early on in the book,

THE SEA by John Banville (Man Booker Prize 2005)

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An effete old geezer, art historian no-less, after the death of his wife from cancer goes back to visit scenes from his adolescent life. He rents a room with Miss Vavassar and copes with the jealousy of the other lodger, a retired major, wouldn't you guess? Our lonely old widower relives in his mind the longeurs of teenage holidays and his obsession with the family of  Mr and Mrs Grace, twins Chloe and Myles plus Rose, the nanny. He is now lodging in the house this family used to rent for the summer.

In that past of glorious summers by the sea

The Leviathan by Paul Auster (1992) Viking Press

A strange, frustrating style at first which takes some perseverance. It ended up more rewarding than I had begun to fear. Reported speech from characters with lots to say! The main character is such a precise, moral person that he eventually finds he has murderered somebody - but in mitigating circumstances! When he finds out more about the man he has killed, he feels that he had much in common with his victim. So there it is; the lesson for us all.


The book probably owes its theme to Thomas Hobbes

Daughter of the Desert by Georgina Howell. Pan Books, 2006

The title's 'daughter of the desert' was Gertrude Bell, an ironmaster's daughter from the North-East of England. The book itself was a birthday present from my daughter, Pippa. We are both interested in Gertrude's life and achievements having first met her in a novel based around the Cairo Conference, 1921 when she met with Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and others to negotiate the governance of Mesopotamia, the region we now refer to as Iraq. The origins of present-day Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine also come into Gertrude Bell's story.

What was Gertrude doing there? Well, it is a great story. She explored the Arab areas and made friends with the sheikhs and other Arabs who worked for her on her expeditions.  Remarkable, given attitudes towards women in this region. She learned Arabic and several dialects. She respected and loved their culture and became a major source of information about it.

She came from a very close family and before she went to the Middle East she had been the first woman to gain a double first at Oxford - not many women even got to university then. She became an intrepid mountaineer known to and respected by the male guides and climbers of her day. The climbing episodes I personally found a bit boring but the account of her life as an expert on the Arab world throws a great light on why and what the military are doing there now. The British and French, for example, last century, as allies fought a war in the area against the Turks. Oil for the British Navy was a strong interest. At the time of the First World War 1914-18, the Turkish Empire which controlled the area, was gradually being eased out by force and politics.



Gertrude Bell would have been horrified