I found Désirée’s Baby rather profound, which somewhat surprises me due to the similarity between its ending and the ending of The Awakening – one would have thought it wouldn’t seem so shocking given both the similarity of the actions and the similarity between the reasons. Away from that, I think it’s fair to say that many, many people like the story.

One of the biggest questions regards Armand’s background and behaviour. The Kate Chopin International Society’s website describes the likelihood of Armand having black mistresses, quoting:

“And the way he cries,” went on Désirée, “is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away as La Blanche’s cabin.”

The site says that this could be evidence of Armand’s affairs with black women – La Blanche is one of the women on the estate. Significantly, however, they remind us that all we have to go by are Chopin’s words. They also quote this:

One of La Blanche’s little quadroons…

Who knows what Chopin meant exactly, but this is the point when Désirée starts to worry and it seems she is literally putting two and two together – the site suggests Désirée’s baby is also a ‘quadroon’, a person who is a quarter black, and that perhaps Désirée also spots a likeness between La Blanche’s child and her own, facially.

Beyond the site’s ideas of family connection, Désirée has seen something in her baby’s skin tone that wasn’t noticeable before and with Valmondé having already pointed out a change – we can assume this is the baby’s skin colour – it’s possible that what Désirée notices is that resemblance to La Blanche’s son. We can assume that for whatever reason at birth, it was not noticed.

Then Armand’s opinion and behaviour:

“It means,” he answered lightly, “that the child is not white; it means you are not white.”

We don’t know much about Armand, but this assumption, if we can be so kind to call it thus, fits in with the age-old idea that a woman is at fault for the sex of a baby being female – it’s Désirée’s fault the baby isn’t white; her lack of known heritage means it’s her problem.

What’s particularly interesting is how Désirée chooses death in a similar fashion to Edna Pontellier. Although for different reasons, both have been rejected. Désirée does not take the offer of moving back to her adopted parents’ home. Was her mother’s feeling that something was off, and the offer of returning home, due to knowledge of Armand that Désirée didn’t have?

And is there anything in the eeriness of Armand’s house? We can possibly see something there, a foreboding, and a metaphor for his personality, which the International Society says could have been dark, pointing to the details about his father and the difference cited between father and son.

In burning his wife and child’s possessions, Armand effectively and symbolically throws away his own heritage. We do not know if he knew about his heritage prior to this, and indeed the reading is more profound if we consider it was a revelation to him upon discovery of the letter, but it’s possible he did and that he’s doing his best to ‘pass’; a subject recently studied by Helen Oyeyemi. In wondering if Armand knew, we can look to this:

…the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and name…

Is injury a strong enough word for Désirée has supposedly done?

Beyond this tragedy is another: when Valmondé says to return, she doesn’t refute Désirée’s fear. In terms of what Chopin was saying, it’s fair to say Valmondé didn’t think Désirée was black and that her lack of acknowledgement of that is a device that allows Chopin to create the ending. Had Valmondé addressed the question she may have saved Désirée’s life.

Désirée meets her death whilst looking angelic:

…her hair was uncovered and the sun’s rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes

She has feet ‘delicately shod’ and a ‘thin white garment’ that’s been torn by her journey. And she ‘disappeared among the reeds and willows’ – symbolic, perhaps, as the baby’s cradle, we learn shortly afterwards, was made of willow and that cradle also ‘dies’.

Of Armand’s possible discovery – rather than reminder – of his heritage, all Chopin says is this:

There was a remnant of one back in the drawer from which he took them. But it was not Désirée’s; it was part of an old letter from his mother to his father. He read it.

He read it – Chopin says that, and ‘dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery’.

The jury’s out but we can assume if it was in the back of the drawer and a remnant, it could have been there since the days of his father, because otherwise the question is what happened to the rest of the letter and why did Armand keep only that bit?

These past months, I’ve spent most of my screen time watching TV shows, or, rather, one TV show. I’m loving Parks & Recreation but there is a lot of it to get through. The natural casualty has been films – I have been reading a good amount; screen time is pretty low overall. I’m on series 6 now and whilst there are some other shows I’m planning to watch they’re a lot shorter and, I expect, not as addictive. I will, however, not be setting any film goals. I’m wondering if saying, at year’s end, that my next year’s film resolution is to ‘watch as many as I comfortably can’, as I have in regards to reading and books, would be best.

Independence Day: Resurgence (USA, 2016) – Is it really 20 years since Will Smith fought aliens? This follow up is good if technically unnecessary. It’s the only film other than the Hunger Games trilogy/quartet in which I’ve seen Liam Hemsworth, so I might have been watching Gale go after extraterrestrials…

Mirror Mirror (USA, 2011) – The second of the two Snow White movies of 2011; I’d wanted to see both and now have. This one’s a lot lighter than Snow White And The Huntsman, and the first half stays fairly closely to the storyline. It does lose its way in the second half, gets a bit too silly, but the Bollywood-esque item number at the end is awesome.

Some Like It Hot (USA, 1959) – One of the two remaining ‘big’ Monroe movies I had yet to see (the other is The Prince And The Showgirl). It was a hit with my family many moons ago so I’d seen various bits and pieces over the years but far from the whole thing. One I enjoyed – not a favourite, but a fun couple of hours.

So, no goals.

Which films have you seen recently that you’d recommend?

This month has been about finishing books. I started only a couple of new books, keeping with my expectations – I read new books when I’d finished a couple of longer-term reads and during times in the month I knew I’d likely be able to finish the new books in. The middle of the month, for example. I haven’t finished all my long-term reads; there were 6 and I’ve finished 3.

All books are works of fiction.

The Books

Anthony Cartwright: The Cut – The story of Cairo’s life in Dudley and Grace’s hope to create a film about leavers and remainers. A story about the divide in Britain in regards to Brexit, this was specially commissioned by Peirene Press after the vote and it’s a subtle, mindful look at the issues involved.

F Scott Fitzgerald: Tender Is The Night – A young filmstar meets an older American couple and becomes infatuated with the husband, which further exposes the problems in the marriage. A mess.

Joanna Hickson: The Agincourt Bride – A story of Catherine de Valois, looking at her early years to the start of her marriage to Henry V. A well-researched and constructed book about a lesser-known queen.

Marie-Sabine Roger: Get Well Soon – In hospital after an accident that’s a bit of a mystery, Jean-Pierre must deal with staff who won’t close his door, bad food, a rescuer in trouble, and a girl who wants to steal his laptop. An enjoyable enough story, just lacking in conflict and progression.

Sally O’Reilly: Dark Aemilia – Having married her kin after falling pregnant with Shakespeare’s child, Aemilia Lanyer attempts to become a published poet in an age where women stayed in the home and most certainly didn’t enlist the help of reputed witches. An interesting book with a particular concept, the backdrop of theatre behind every chapter.

This month was a lot of fun where reading was concerned. The books were pretty good but in addition there was that happy productive satisfaction of striking books off my reading list and being able to look at my main list of the year’s books knowing it’s becoming more of a true reflection of how much I’ve read rather than a list of numbers that up until now haven’t stood for much. I definitely had a book I didn’t like – Tender Is The Night. It’s been a long time since I’ve given a book such a low rating and when I went to log the finish date I saw I’ve been reading it for much longer than the 7 or so months I’d thought – it’s been 18 months. I’m glad I’ve read it because I think I would have always wondered about it, but I’m glad to have done with it. No book stands out as a favourite. The genres were so varied, the subjects too, but on an appreciation level, all but the Fitzgerald would win joint first prize. Cartwright did a good job of explaining a delicate subject in an interesting way; Hickson’s use and care of research is excellent; Roger’s technique is great; O’Reilly’s concept full of literary merit. It was a month full of literary appreciation and good craft.

Quotation Report

In Get Well Soon an older man wishes people would just get on with the idea of accepting people as they are. And in The Cut, Cairo reminds us that whilst the media talks a lot about a divide and makes it seem all-pervading, most often people just get on with their lives.

I’m finishing up a book I started in June and then moving back to a tome… or two. In terms of finishing books I started long ago there are a few 500+ pages still on the list. As is becoming the norm here, my plan is just to read as much as possible.

How is your summer going, or your winter if you live in the Southern hemisphere?

Last year, Peirene Press launched the first title in their ‘Peirene Now’ imprint series. breach, lower case intentional, delivered a collection of short stories about the refugee camp in Calais and various people’s opinions on it. This month second book, The Cut is being released, a response to Brexit, a fictional conversation about the reasons people voted ‘leave’ or ‘remain’.

I said ‘yes’ to the invitation to interview the author; here is the result.

How did you come to write The Cut?

I was approached in the summer of last year by Meike Ziervogel of Peirene. I took it on for a few reasons. The first was that I thought I could do a good job – I’d written about some of the divisions and inequalities that seem to have underpinned much of the vote in my previous work. I also knew I would write about Dudley again. And it was a chance to work with Peirene, whose books I really admire, as part of a fascinating project.

The book opens with a bit of ambiguity. Was this a concious decision, to reveal what was going on, who was involved and how, slowly?

That sequence in Dudley market-place was the first thing I wrote. It wasn’t entirely clear to me who was on fire when I first wrote it. And although it’s probably too simple to say that I wrote the rest of the story to find out who it was, we certainly made a conscious decision while editing to focus on the slow revelation of how a woman comes to run through Dudley on fire. In fact, it was Meike as editor who picked up on this and asked me to pursue it.

There are various ways a book about the Brexit divide could be written because of the effects on both large and individual scales. You chose to focus on two individuals. Why did you decide to do this, and could you tell us about their relationship?

Cairo and Grace’s relationship might be best summed up as mutual attraction but also mutual incomprehension. For the story to work I think it had to be about individuals and a very specific place and set of circumstances. I mean this as a kind of antidote to the massive generalisations all sorts of people were making after the referendum – that we had 17 and a half million racists on one side and 16 million people who were happy with a kind of social apartheid based on class on the other – that kind of thing! I think fiction is able to explore specifics and the emotions of the characters, and this seems more difficult in mainstream political discourse. Of course I also have the luxury of asking questions without having to give answers.

Throughout, the book is subtle in its look at Brexit – the reader often has to look into what else is happening to make the connections – and you include a sort of acknowledgement of this late in the book when Cairo talks about people just living life alongside the debates. Could you tell us more about that?

Some of the great tiredness Cairo talks about at a similar stage in the story is connected with this. He talks about the kind of deep fatigue of having to live lives out on what seems to be the wrong side of a historical divide. To Cairo the hysteria around the referendum is just one more episode in the slow (although sometimes very quick) structural violence that has been done to his community and the place he lives. Something that struck me was the remainers talk of a ‘catastrophe’ after the result, but for many people and places the catastrophe has been going on for generations now. There were plenty of people on both sides of the Brexit divide quite happy to ignore that fact.

What are your hopes for the publication of The Cut, and for Britain going forward in the negotiations?

My own immediate hope is that we get a Labour government in power, fulfilling the promises of the recent manifesto. Economic and social justice should be what matters, the negotiations will have to be driven by that, not the other way round. As for The Cut, well, it’s published now, so if people read it and it makes them think, that would be great.

My thanks to Anthony and to James at Peirene for setting it all up. The Cut is out now. For more information, go to Peirene’s site or The Guardian’s review.

I’ve recently discovered something interesting of the sort I expect you can relate to. It’s something I reckon is always there, particularly the more we read, but it’s taken until now for me to have that light bulb moment where it all comes together as a full concept.

I’m finding that I can generally tell within a couple of pages, sometimes sentences, whether I can trust the author I’m currently reading to tell a good, well-written, story.

I expect it comes down to two things, both subjective: 1) I’m increasingly knowledgeable of what, to me, constitutes a good book, and 2) some authors are just too good at pulling you in from the start. The kind of writing and voice is often very similar in a basic way and the feeling oof trust is that lovely feeling of knowing what you’re getting into, where you start a book and it just feels right and you settle down into your seat because you’ve – definitely now – every intention of staying there a few hours.

Sometimes I’m wrong about trust but it’s generally on a sliding scale. The more the initial trust, the more likely the trust wil turn out to be warranted. There’s probably a mathematical formula out there…

A lack of feeling of trust doesn’t mean a book will be bad, often far from it, but it does more often than not to books I think are great but profound. (This is related to my year round up five stars and ‘best of the best’.)

I do believe we all feel this, just in different ways, our preferences creating differences.

What elements of a book cause your ‘I’m going to love this’ feeling and how often do you find books meeting your initial expectations?