And so we're off to Sunny Spain...

Yes, me and Mr T and the tumperkinettes are off to Spain this weekend! Andalucia, the Costa del Sol. I can hardly wait. It's been 14 years since I was last in Andalucia and 7 since I was last in Spain and I've loved every trip I've taken there. Ah, Spain, with its paprika flavoured crisps and aversion to fresh milk, its paper tableclothes with those plastic clips and those little oil/vinegar/salt/pepper sets. Sun, sea, sand and sunscreen. Happy boys, relaxed parents (I hope). Lots of books. Early to bed, late to rise, Siestas - gratuitous ones.

The truth is, I need a holiday. Badly. I've been burning those candles, baby. And the bags under my eyes are not looking good.

Apparently it was 37 degrees in Malaga yesterday. I am going to melt.

I'll be offline for a couple of weeks at least...

T

Connections

I've been offline for a while. Edits on The Book... Last night was my first night off for a while. I spent it gutting the contents of Google Reader, tweeting, drinking Prosecco and watching Glastonbury on BBC3. Not a bad night.

Highlight of my Glasto viewing was the Fleet Foxes. I love that name. Fleet. Foxes.

We have foxes that come to our garden. Two at least. Sometimes at night - especially in Spring - we hear their high yips. Dawn and dusk they appear. And once they came, boldly, in the afternoon.

I have the sort of mind that makes connections, sometimes unwarranted ones. When I watched the Fleet Foxes, I thought of not just of the foxes in my garden but of the river Fleet, the Water of Fleet, Fleet Steet. I thought of fleet-footed things. I thought of a poem read a long time ago, To An Athlete Dying Young by A E Housman, from A Shropshire Lad.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

I read that poem when I was 16 - when I was going through an E M Forster obsession. I read it because there's a scene in A Room With A View where the Reverend Beebe is looking at the books in George's home and spies A Shropshire Lad.

I don't know why I particularly remember To An Athlete Dying Young, but I do remember I had to read that verse above lots of times before I understood it so maybe it was that. I remember loving that line The fleet foot on the sill of shade and that I needed to understand it. And I remember getting it, at last - the act of burial and the spirit of the young man stepping from this world into the next. The sill of shade his threshold.

I loved the film of A Room with A View, which was unabashedly romantic in a way that wasn't entirely true to the book, the character of the Reverend Beebe in particular. In the book, I'm pretty sure he dismisses A Shropshire Lad, or disapproves of it. In the film though, he is intrigued. Of course, in the film, he romps naked with George and Freddy in a swimming hole....

You know I'm about to bring this home, don't you?

Nobody said it better after all.

Only connect.

I first read those words over 20 years ago. They hit me in the gut then, and they do it now. That phrase must drift across my mind at least once a week. Even just this last few weeks, I had a new shift of understanding with it, finding another layer of meaning.

I love those words. They are a call to humanity. Devoid of formal belief; a straight plea to something within us we all share. Simple and easy and bold and the hardest thing in the world. Only connect.

Is that what reading and writing and blogging and tweeting and all that stuff is? An offer? A branch? Me to you and you to me?

In which I blog about the end of my Adrien English glom

I got up this morning, humming this. Hummed it all day.



I only just realised why.

I just finished a week-long glom of the Adrien English mysteries by Josh Lanyon. Yup. All five books, in order, one after the other. I think it's possibly my most intense glom yet.

The fifth book features a fifty year old mystery, the murder of Jay Stevens, clarinet player with The Moonglows. Hence the humming.

Are you wondering how I found the glom?

So great. And I can't put it behind me without blogging about the final book a little.

In this final book, The Dark Tide, Lanyon ties up the wonderful romance arc between Adrien and Jake with a mystery that has closeted sexuality at its heart. The phrase 'dark tide' is referenced in a conversation Adrien has with a suspect when she talks about what fear makes someone do (...you go with it, even when you should fight...) This exchange makes Adrien think of the dark tide Jake has swum in - his closeted sexuality and fear of exposure - until his outing at the end of book 4, a fear almost destroyed both Adrien and Jake until Jake's pivotal redemptive act at the end of that penultimate book.

This last bit of the romance arc deals with whether Adrien can take the step of trusting Jake and enter into a fully committed relationship with him. Since Jake has made it clear that Adrien is who he wants, the dynamics of their relationship to date are turned on their head in this book. Now Jake is the petitioner, Adrien the one withholding.

But the journey is not one-way. This isn't merely about Jake redeeming himself and Adrien forgiving him, it's about Adrien being changed too. Throughout the book, we get various characters' takes on Adrien: former lovers, family, friends. He's described repeatedly as a loner and we see how he always maintains a little distance between himself and others, even people he loves. We see that he's an island really. In spite of his frail post-operative state at the start of book 5, he is determined not to lean on anyone, irritated by the constant questions as to whether he is well and by his family's attempts to cosset him. He'd rather be in his own, somewhat unsafe home than be taken care of.

Except when it comes to Jake. He muses, with varying levels of self-awareness, throughout the book about the fact that he feels differently about Jake than anyone else. Only with Jake does he long to breach that little distance; to be alone no longer. We observe various reasons for this: their shared humour, that Jake makes Adrien feel cared for without unmanning him, that their minds work in similar ways as they investigate the mystery, and that physically, between them it is the real thing... raw and powerful and dangerous. Had I really believed I could make do with safe substitutes? Adrien's been out his whole adult life, but only with Jake does he take that step outside of himself and truly connect with another.

Something I loved very much was this: Close to the end, Adrien takes the plunge and commits to Jake, but the final profound moment of understanding for Adrien only comes after this step of faith, in the scene when the mystery is revealed. It's only then that Adrien has a blinding moment of comprehension, a visceral appreciation of what that dark tide that almost overcame Jake really is. How it can make someone kill what they love, and sentence themselves to a half-lived life tainted by lies and fear. And so his journey - and Jake's - come to this:

Maybe it was true. Maybe one person could make a difference. Maybe love could make a difference. It had made a difference to me.

It's not just Jake that's changed at the end of this series, it's Adrien too. His defective heart is set right, and not just by surgery, but by loving Jake fully and being loved in return, every barrier swept aside.

Bursting with stuff I want to talk about

I have this mental list of things I've been burning to blog about, but I've not been doing much blogging because I've been writing a lot. Oh, and reading. Reading a lot. But I miss blogging, and I miss you, you Silent Online Presences of my Imagination. So here's a lazy run down of what's been obsessing me lately.

1. I'm reading Josh Lanyon's Adrien English mysteries. It's really stupid but I've held off reading these forever, despite regularly reading good reviews from people I trust. First I held off cos I didn't have an e-reader and the print copies seemed expensive when I checked. Then, when I got a Kindle, I still held off, in a kind of masochistic way and also through my lingering issue with not massively enjoying mysteries/suspense.

Anyway, the other day I was mooching around on Amazon and this ebook popped up: books 1 and 2 together for a very reasonable price! I bought it impulsively, read 1 and 2 back to back and am now on 3. And I am a very happy bunny indeed. I am loving these books. The mystery element is actually enjoyable but I am reading these books For The Romance and the on-off Adrien and Jake arc is just killing me. I love this story. And I love the writing, the storytelling, the lovely spare descriptions. Can I just wallow in these lines again? The final lines of book 2 :

He met my gaze and shrugged. Then he tossed his keys, caught them, and started for his car. Over his shoulder he called "Are you following me or am I following you?"

I opened my mouth - then let it go. Mildly, I said, "Are you sure you know the way?"

He paused. Turned. "Hey," he said. "I found you, didn't I?"

The thing that's so satisfying about this exchange is that it's a totally ordinary conversation. (Adrien and Jake which are at a house Adrien owns and about to go back to LA. Jake managed to find his way there on his own by car earlier in the book). Yet these words just ache with something much more.

That question of Jake's - are you following me or am I following you? - I read it. And suddenly it was profound: what keeps bringing these two back together despite Jake's closeted nature? Adrien openly wants Jake. Jake can't give him what he wants, yet he's the one doing the chasing. Who's following who?

And then Adrien: are you sure you know the way? Adrien, younger yet so much wiser. Somehow more phelgmatic, more realistic.

And then, then, Jake's answer. I found you, didn't I? Beautifully. Poignantly. Hopeful.

I'm really admiring the amount of yearning Lanyon gets on the page. Lovely. I'm in that place right now where I simultaneously want to be at the end of book 5 and at the beginning of book 1 and right in the middle of the whole series. Just immersed.

2. I've been wanting to do some Friday music posts on my deep and abiding love for Bob Dylan. Dylan is kind of my go-back-to artist. I listen to all sorts of stuff, but every now and again, I have to go back to him. I started listening to him when I was a teenager. My last major obsessive Dylan-period was about 5 years ago when for about a year (I kid you not) I listened to little else.

The other day, we were driving down to Northumberland for a little camping weekend and we put on Highway 61 Revisited. This contains a number of songs I adore, but in particular, Like a Rolling Stone and Ballad of a Thin Man. And I had this sort of personal epiphany which is probably the most boring thing in the world to true Dylan fans who would say, I think, well, yeah, of course he does that; it's too obvious to mention. But to me it feels fresh and new and it's this: some of Dylan's best songs (and actually, my favourites) are these really personal and uncompromising and specific diatribes. And I love that. Best of all is that these rants are also infused with easy-to-miss humanity and understanding. They're deeply personal and weirdly contradictory.

3. This post is getting longer than I initially imagined! I was going to mention my desire to talk about geographical settings, specifically American and British settings. I will do so only briefly now.

America first: To me, 'America' is this hugely, endlessly interesting idea, or rather set of ideas; massive and contradictory; encompassing so much. I feel like I only have a basic and sporadic understanding of the geography and cultures of the US. But you know what? Exploring those ideas through a specific genre of fiction is a really interesting thing to do.

As for British settings, my feelings about American settings can be usefully contrasted with my feelings about British settings. The sense of familiarity, of home, reading somewhere you know. Recognising something absolutely real and of your own experience. I will blog on this more another time.

It's late. I'm to bed.

Night.