Choosing what’s best for yourself.

Keaton has been told that her cheating ex (who was cheating with his ex-wife) and her boss (the ex-wife) are having a baby and the boss wants Keaton to take a promotion to help out on a higher-up level. Keaton decides she’s had enough. At the same time, her mother and uncle are looking to put their old family home on the market – finally, after many years of leaving it abandoned after their parents’ early deaths, they want to sell. So Keaton sets off to North Carolina to clear the heritage house she’s never been to and spend some time thinking about her next moves for her life. It won’t be simple, however – when she gets to Beaufort, NC, she falls in love with the house, the people, and her nextdoor neighbour is seriously hot. And she finds out something her mum does not know – many of the townspeople still talk about the sudden disappearance and presumed death of Rebecca and Townsend St James. The car crash that was rumoured may not be the real story.

A Happier Life is a dual timeline, dual narrative tale (with a brief third) of discovery in all its forms. It sees a bit of a change from Woodson Harvey’s recent work; one of the defining elements of 2022’s The Wedding Veil was a mystery and 2023’s The Summer Of Songbirds had a couple of things to iron out in this same vein, but A Happier Life is particularly high on it as to reach it as a genre categorisation. It also has a vastly different sort of ending that has proved controversial (more on that later). But in sum, this book does scratch any itch you might have to read more of the author’s work.

The basic features of a great Woodson Harvey novel are all here. (I do consider her to be an excellent writer.) You have the focus on characters and characterisation; the importance of family, never in any way overbearing, all very lovely and natural; and the wonderful North Carolina/Southern women’s fiction atmosphere that, in this Brit’s necessarily detached view, makes for a very homely and friendly setting.

Nevertheless that Keaton probably should have nipped her relationship with her co-worker-who-was-her-boss’s-husband in the bud, her journey of personal and familial discovery is lovely to read. Whilst she guards her heart very strongly for a while, the goodness she finds in the seaside town wins her over slowly as you know it will. She is the first narrator to be introduced, and arguably the main one.

Narrator two is Keaton’s unknown grandmother, Rebecca, who died long before Keaton was born. Her narrative is definitely more filler-in than completely fully-fledged, simply because we rely on her narrative to find out secrets, but she’s a good character also. (One of the defining aspects of Woodson Harvey’s novels and the reason starting one of her books feels so wonderful is that you know you’ll be greeted by a plethora of good people.)

To speak of the other main characters singularly would spoil the story; there’s only one further that is safe to discuss and that is Salt the dog who is modelled after Woodson Harvey’s own bundle of fur. Salt brings people together as all good boys do and is winsome – he is paramount to the plot.

(What I can say about people as a group is that Keaton’s friendships are lovely and Rebecca’s dinner parties are similarly good; Rebecca’s narrative is in part about menus and creating guest lists of compatible people, and food. Woodson Harvey includes a couple of recipes in the end pages of the book.)

Having chosen to set her novel in the town she lives in herself, Woodson Harvey’s use of location is, needless to say, on point.

There is a romance – it is sweet, well-written, extremely realistic as the author’s past novels have also been, and moves at a good pace. Woodson Harvey writes her romantic heroes very well.

The mystery itself unravels slowly – whilst it’s a focus it’s not the focus until the end; there is plenty of other story content here and you never feel it’s taking a while to get there (and truly the book spans a fairly short period of time in both narratives, anyway). And as the mystery concerns the ending I mentioned, let’s get to it. I’ll try my best to avoid spoiling it.

Given I’m writing this so late after publication and, indeed after my own reading of the novel, I might as well address the fact that some readers have been disappointed with the ending of A Happier Life due to the marketing and the cover (and, I expect, the author’s previous work being different). This book is indeed not really the beach read some expect. The conclusion of the mystery is a very bold choice, I feel, and whilst I understand the view of those who find it upsetting and not ‘right’, I personally see Woodson Harvey having used it in the star-crossed lovers sense, soul mates, and so on. Is it a surprise? Yes, it is, particularly given the choice Woodson Harvey makes as to where to end the book, but it does fit the point she was trying to make (succeeds in making, I would say) about the love between the two people.

So A Happier Life, then, is different. The title is shorter (it was initially titled The House On Sunset Lane, changed perhaps to give prospective readers pause). It doesn’t feature photos on its cover, instead a drawing. And the story, whilst still family and person and location and historically focused, is different in tone.

But it is, dare I say, objectively, a very decent read and a suitable progression of the author’s work.

Publisher: Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster)
Pages: 357
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-668-01219-2
First Published: 25th June 2024
Date Reviewed: 21st November 2024

Netflix’s Rebecca offers something that was sorely lacking in Alfred Hitchcock’s original adaptation; owing to the Code of the time, Daphne Du Maurier’s original ending was changed. I’ve been surprised that it’s taken so long for Hollywood or anyone else to produce an updated, ‘true’ version, in film – there have been TV series – but Netflix has done it.

I’ll refrain from saying what either Du Maurier’s or Hitchcock’s endings are just in case someone who doesn’t know them stumbles across this review, but I do expect most reading this will at least know one or the other.

To speak more broadly, to get this review properly in motion, this new adaptation is in many ways very different. It has proved controversial – many have not liked it – but then I’d question how many are basing their dislike with only Hitchcock for reference. (Though certainly any dislike here would be better than those who only know Lawrence Olivier’s version of Wuthering Heights and compare it to a newer adaptation, given how much more horrifying the book is compared to that film. What is it about Olivier and films that fundamentally change the book’s ending or story… yes, I know, the Code!)

At the risk of reiterating a well-known premise, our unnamed narrator is employed as a companion to a fairly wealthy woman and when they are holidaying in Monte Carlo, the narrator meets Maxim de Winter, a rich widower. When her employer falls ill, the narrator is taken on a number of dates by Max, who has taken a shine to her, and they ultimately end up suddenly marrying, much to the employer’s irritation and warnings. The couple travel back to the de Winter seat, Mandeley, but much of the house is a shrine to the first wife and the narrator starts to be drawn in by the obsessed housekeeper and Rebecca’s decorative influences everywhere she looks.

Lily James is our narrator character, not as much a narrator as the character is in the book, but the film follows her. She isn’t a bad choice for the job but I have to agree with other reviewers who say the character seems a little too… I’m going to use the word ‘confident’ for ease, and that due to this the character’s later decent into paranoia doesn’t quite pass muster. This is surely an issue of direction because it is all in the unspoken gestures and actions – the script itself is fine. This does, then, all mean the character isn’t always believable but I do wonder how I might have felt if I didn’t have both the primary and secondary source material so well known to me. It’s quite impossible to avoid comparisons and due to the differences the production has made, most particularly the overall look and to Max’s character – in comparison to Olivier’s, I’ll get on to that – I can’t help but wonder how this film would seem were it the only adaptation or, at least, if there had been none from Hitchcock.

Essentially, then, I do not think Lily James’ narrator is… wrong, but she had a lot already riding on her. As I wrote in my notebook, this film is about giving her more agency than Joan Fontaine’s had.

Armie Hammer’s Max is where it gets interesting. Pushed back a bit, as it were, to seem less of a presence, less important than even before, you get more of a sense of it being the narrator’s story here. However what you also get, which is, I’d say, the best aspect of the film, is a real sense that Max loves the narrator. Hammer’s Max still says that iconic line, ‘I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool’, but in this case, he actually really seems to love her, ‘fool’ aside. A lot of this is due to the fact more scenes are spent in Monte Carlo but whoever chose to put Hammer on the list for casting, deserves some points for a scoring system I haven’t created. I’ve never before felt that Max was really into his relationship. Watching this film, I do now. Hammer also makes Max more appealing in general – you can see why the narrator loves him. This said, the age gap is not apparent, which possibly has something to do with it. It does render ‘you little fool’ a little foolish.

Kristin Scott Thomas had big boots or high heels to fill in her Mrs Danvers but also nothing too fundamental to change – Mrs Danvers will always be Mrs Danvers, Hitchcock ending or not. Scott Thomas’ version of the character is not all that terrifying, mostly due to the cinematography doing a lot of the legwork and the character being updated in actions and direction to better fit our present day (there are no squealing strings or psychotic, film, looks, for example) but she is scary enough – more manipulative. Scoot Thomas also manages to humanise the character a bit, which is fascinating to witness.

The biggest aspect then, as said, is the reinstatement of the book’s ending. It also helps humanise Max (a lot of the film is about humanisation, really, which is something I came to realise while writing this review) and it is, as a result, a lot more interesting. It also allows the narrator to come full circle from being confident to vulnerable to confidence once more. She holds her own at last. And it gives Mrs Danvers more to do. In fact the only thing I wasn’t sure about was the very, very, end where the film finishes on Lily James breaking the fourth wall before the title on a backdrop breaks the contact – by the end things have changed, yet here is Rebecca’s name once again.

All in all, then, while, yes, there are ways it could have been better (I do hope we don’t have to wait another 82 years for another film adaptation) it is satisfactory. There is a lot to enjoy – Rebecca’s suite suits her to an ‘R’ and that cinematography is perfect.

I don’t think James and Hammer will be replacing Fontaine and Olivier in the popular culture, but it’s a bloody good attempt.

Today I want to remember my rabbits, Lavender (white rabbit), and Anya, or Lav Lav and AnAn as I tended to call them. Mini lops with another breed in their heritage (AnAn was a one up, one down lop).

Both rabbits spent the majority of their lives with chronic illnesses, becoming ill in the first months of lockdown. They were diagnosed with Arthritis at only 2 years old and in the months after Lavender passed away from a tumour or abscess in his liver, Anya was diagnosed with stomach spasms, painful occurrences that were random; Lavender likely had it also.

It wasn’t the happiest life. While we did the best we could for them and they were often very joyful, their combined illnesses meant that we were very often at the vets for emergency visits all hours of the day and night. At our best we had a break of 6 months. At our worst we were going every 2 weeks. Lavender was very hard of hearing and relied on his sister for a lot, including moral support and cuddles. He more often than not dealt with bad stuff by becoming depressed. AnAn was much more protective, the vets would get one of us to take her out of the carrier – she’d bitten most of them by the end – and reacted to vet visits with trauma.

But there was great joy as well. They were funny, they were cute, they binkied and zoomied a lot. One of my favourite memories is when I was trying to coax Lavender to come out of the pen one day and suddenly from behind, his sister comes flying past, obviously bored of waiting. Another is of Anya as a baby, a few weeks old, hissing at me because she didn’t want me to pick her up to take her back to their hutch. She looked like a cute tiny dragon, not the menacing beast she wanted to appear to be. Lavender would tell me repeatedly when I left the meshed shed window open in summer. AnAn loved to listen to me read aloud – her favourite book was Sarah Marsh’s A Sign Of Her Own with all its phonetics and beautiful writing. She hated Pride And Prejudice, too much dialogue that made her human mother too animated. In her last week I brought Sarah Marsh’s book downstairs to read the first chapter yet again and as soon as I started she ran over for a cuddle.

They had three homes within ours – a hutch, a purpose-built shed, and finally, once diagnosed with Arthritis, our living room. The shed in particular was a good choice – there was a storm the first night they stayed in it and in that storm their double-bolted hutch fell over.

Lavender loved going back in his shed after a day in the run. Anya meanwhile played ‘yes I will, no I won’t’ for at least at hour every evening – I’d tap the litter tray and Lavender would jump straight in for easy transport back to his house, but Anya would jump in and jump out again, even if it was pouring with rain and even after I’d ignore her for 10 minutes at a time to try and given her a fear of missing out. Lavender couldn’t stand any dampness at all. They were born at the very start of the heatwave of 2018 when there wasn’t any rain fall between May and September. The first day of rain was a huge surprise.

The past 6 years and 6 months – the time I had them over all – have been incredibly difficult. Since AnAn died a few days ago, a huge weight has lifted from me. I lived my life in utter stress and paranoia due to how often they got ill and how subtle the signs could be. I loved my rabbits to distraction. I also will never have rabbits again.

I do want to say that rabbits are the best pets I’ve ever had. They are extremely smart, have long memories, aren’t afraid to tell you to get lost if they are bored of you or if you’re doing something that isn’t in their routine (routine is very important – I decided to stay up and watch TV one night and got thumped at until I left the room), and they are very loving. Anya in particular was also very polite – she would thank me for cuddles by bopping me with her nose, she’d thank the water bowl for her drink the same way, she’d even say hello to the dustpan and brush I used to sweep up hay and food crumbs.

However they get ill very easily; their bodies have favoured breeding above anything else. If you’re lucky you’ll have a rabbit that needs a couple of emergency visits over a lifespan of about 12 years. If you’re unlucky… well, my story is above.

I wanted to write all of the above today as one post – the memories, the good, the bad. Given the amount of care I needed to give them, I feel I’ve lost children; they were my first priority always and I lost a lot of sleep over them.

Goodbye my AnAn, the beautiful girl who the vets had seen so much they also cried when she died despite all the biting. (She died of a freak stomach or liver torsion, we didn’t want to do surgery to find out which.) And goodbye again my Lav Lav, who we last saw in good health on Christmas Day.

Lavender Lazuli Place: 10th May 2018 – 29th December 2023
Anya Kuai Le Place: 10th May 2018 – 14th November 2024

My use of a non-podcast reading list continues to do well; I mentioned that in my last reading round up but it bears repeating, at least for me, because it seems I’ve found something that’s working – having used it for about two months now, I believe that it could be called a habit or routine.

I haven’t had this much success in finding ways to reduce the amount of time spent pondering about what to read next since the ‘Long-Awaited Reads’ months a couple of former bloggers hosted in the 2010s. These were held each year in January; I participated in two of them (see one and two) and they may have run for one year prior to that. They were useful in getting books read. My attempt at a follow up in 2019 didn’t result in my reading any of the books I chose… and I still haven’t read any of those books… and I do think that that was probably due to it being me resurrecting the idea by myself. A key factor in the concept, I believe, looking back, is that we were doing it as a small community – it was a real event.

While it’s true that my brand new shiny non-podcast reading list idea doesn’t particularly lean into books that have been on my shelves for as long as any of the Long-Awaited books I chose – more on that in a moment – I think having created something centred around me and my own reading to the exclusion of others has helped bridge that gap, so to speak. It’s not an event, but it’s my… thing.

Of that moment, I have a vague plan to introduce books that have been on my shelf for longer in time; I’m aware that early successes, those dopamine hits, happening now, will help me when I’m adding books I’ve lost excitement for. Books I was really looking forward to, then the passage of time and new books led to me forgetting them. They’ll probably include books from that last, self-created and aborted, Long-Awaited list.

In other news I am still happily reading Alex Hay’s The Queen Of Fives, Susan Stokes-Chapman’s The Shadow Key, and Lee Seong-bok’s Indeterminate Inflorescence.

The first is delighting me not only in its whole (Hay has just got better and better) but in its use of family. We see a very wealthy family about to be the victim of a con – if it goes ahead (I’m not there yet) – and so they could have been less developed as individual characters, but Hay has gone full steam ahead on fleshing them out and giving you a lot of reason to care for them. It makes for a thrilling prospect – whatever will he do when the conwoman, who we also follow, strikes? Perhaps, unlike his first novel, The Housekeepers, wherein we feel most for the tricksters, here in his second book we should feel most for those whose wealth is at stake?

That could actually be it – for all we’re seeing Quinn’s, the conwoman’s, plans, perhaps Hay will turn it on its head this time.

The second book is wonderfully Gothic and one of the most immersive books I’ve ever read. What I’m enjoying is that the plot itself is allowed to move slowly and be predictable at points and it doesn’t matter one bit because the author is so talented; it reminds me of classic novels where character is everything.

And Indeterminate Inflorescence, well, it can’t be discussed in quite the same terms because it’s not fiction, instead it is a collection of sayings – “aphorisms,” says the back cover – from poetry lectures. It’s got some wonderful insights though certainly I think it would be better used as a book to dip in and out of instead of how I’m doing it which is to read it straight through (I’m scheduled to review it, after all). I’m keeping that in mind as I read – whilst it’s not a high-on-aesthetics coffee table book, it would do well as one.

The sun is slowly going down here as I write on Monday 11th November; I spent a couple of hours in the morning working outside – it’s not cold and hasn’t rained much recently. Last year I was in a t-shirt until the 5th November – I remember that very well. This year I’m still in a t-shirt today, though I put on a thin jumper to write outside due to the act of staying still. As someone who hates winter, I appreciate the weather a lot – I’ve always said if our cloudy skies here in the UK changed to blue skies I’d be okay with winter – but it is more evidence of global warming.

For this I can’t be as happy about the warmth as I’d like to be, but I am happy about the reading.

Indeterminate Inflorescence is a collection of aphorisms by the famed South Korean poet, Lee Seong-bok, taken from his lectures on poetry and collected by his university students.

This is a small book – each aphorism is presented as though it were its own short piece of work, numbered and ordered; you can generally tell when subsequent sayings are from the same lecture as the overall subject is passed along.

This isn’t the sort of book to read from cover to cover; I can say from having read it that way (in order to be able to review it in good time) that it will surely work best as something you dip in and out of whenever you need inspiration or the book just takes your fancy. The problem with reading it as I did is that you notice perhaps a little too much the repetitions throughout and given that these repetitions are almost certainly simply down to the poet having lectured for 30 years, as per the publicity materials, this is something you’ll want to avoid.

There is an interesting aesthetic value to this book – it could easily have been produced as a big-production coffee table book and provided a lot of visual pleasure to other poets and poetry lovers, but then it may have lost the simplicity of what Seong-bok says. Certainly he has a very literary, metaphorical, and simile-full way of speaking (or writing, if the students took the aphorisms from his notes rather than their own) but he also studies those devices in his advice and speaks out against them in particular ways and for particular reasons. Some of the things said may create a pause – they can be odd, very much out of left field (a dog menstruating making one think of humans, for example) and there’s quite the random focus on the relation between sex and poetry as so on on other subjects – but the majority are good.

My personal favourite is the one included in the promotional material, number 151. I expect it’s the favourite of many:

Don’t get distracted by what fascinates, question the obvious instead. Write about things you’d never even bothered considering the importance of. The question itself is the answer. There is no meaning that exists, only the process in which we make meaning.

The only thing I feel is missing is an introduction, by one of the students, the translator, whoever – there is a very brief note about how the book came to be (largely what I’ve described in my opening) but nothing else beyond that. Some added context about what exactly the lectures were about, where they were given, and how the students collected the notes would have been lovely and would have set the book off.

On this, however, I found an Instagram post from the translator, Anton Hur (who has done a wonderful job), which is insightful:

This book was an incredible labor of love from start to finish. Years ago, I found it in a bookstore and fell in love with it. But it was technically non-fiction, and Korean non-fiction was not getting translated so much (at all?) at the time. I made a sample, just for myself, put it in a drawer, and forgot about it.

Then came 2020 when I got to attend [The British Centre for Literary Translation’s] multilingual prose workshop […] I was trying to illustrate a point and showed the workshop my sample. They were WOWED. They asked me if there were more of these aphorisms! That’s when I knew this book could work in translation.

I thought maybe 200 people would buy the book. But then right before publication, RM of BTS uploaded some of Lee Seong-bok’s aphorisms¹.

Suffice to say this provides a reason for there not being an introduction by the original compilers. There is also the following from the publicity materials:

Students of his class spent a decade gathering Lee’s most inspired, fruitful and provocative insights, which were published as a book of aphorisms in 2015 called Indeterminate Inflorescence.

Over all, then, Indeterminate Inflorescence makes for a lovely keepsake that will round off a poetry lover’s library with an aid or inspiration for when time is short. It’s the kind of book you can buy and enjoy over and over again, gaining new insights every time. There are so many aphorisms included – 470 – that you’re bound to find some that resonate with you and that on a very high level.

I was sent this book for review.

Publisher: Allen Lane (Penguin)
Pages: 162
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-241-72815-4
First Published: 2015; 12th September 2023 in English
Date Reviewed: 13th November 2024

Original language: Korean
Original title: 무한화서 (Indeterminate Inflorescence)
Translated by: Anton Hur

Footnotes

¹ Anton Hur, 15th December 2023, Instagram