Simon Singh and Chiropractic

Right, haven’t posted since forever, have a huge backlog of books, realistically I’m never going to review them (although there is one that I’ve had a few derogatory thoughts about that I’d definitely like to mention), but this is a cause pretty close to my heart and they’re asking anyone with a blog to post on it.  I know no-one reads this, but the more the merrier.  Showing solidarity  counts.

Quick background (and a much more comprehensive, intelligent and funny summation of the situation than I could ever give can be found here).  A scientist and author called Simon Singh who rights excellent, easy-to-read books about hard-to-understand subjects such as cryptography, the big bang and Fermat’s Last Theorem, wrote an article on chiropractic in the Guardian newspaper.  The British Chiropractic Association took exception to some of the comment within this article, specifically the following two sentences:

“The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.”

Bless their craven, supposedly free-speech supporting cold, black hearts, The Guardian promptly pulled the article in its entirety.  The BCA, sniffing victory, asserted that they had no beef with the newspaper and were instead suing Simon Singh independently.  We have some deeply insane libel laws in Britland, and a deeply peculiar judge called Mr Justice Eady who is well known for upholding very dodgy claims, such as this, and, particularly reprehensibly, this. When Singh called the BCA’s bluff and fought their action he unfortunately fell foul of these lawas and that judge and lost.  And so Singh launched an appeal, using his own money (well into six figures), and fought back.  He’s like Revenge of the Nerds in a single, interestingly coiffed package.

Whether Mr Justice Eady is wildly out of control in other rulings is a subject for another day but I, along with a huge proportion of the science community, are vehemently opposed to allowing libel laws to dictate what can and can’t be stated in a scientific context.  A campaign was set up to support Singh and hopefully bring about a change in libel laws such that actions like these can never be brought again.  Please take a look:

Sense About Science

Anyway, there’s been an awful lot of back and forth but now, in an effort to make it clear exactly what the wretched BCA are complaining about supporters of the campaign have been asked to reprint the entire article as originally published, minus the two sentences complained about, in order to demonstrate exactly what all the fuss was about.  So, for any three of you who do read this, please take a look at the article below, and try to find it in your heart to sign the petition.  It’s important stuff.  Why?  Because if this case is upheld, then anyone in the UK who has the temerity to question alternative medicine practices is now liable to be sued, due to the peculiar British convention of precedent to determine the validity of an action.  So, you know, important.

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

The books are getting out of hand.

Who am I kidding – reviews are not going to be forthcoming in anything like a timely manner and I want to put these books away.  So here goes, a quick listing which will at least enable me to get them back on the shelves.

24. The Dark Volume – G W Dahlquist

25.  The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie

26. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie

27. Drowned Ammet – Diana Wynne Jones

28. The Crown of Dalemark – Diana Wynne Jones

29. The Spellcoats – Diana Wynne Jones

30. Cart & Cwidder – Diana Wynne Jones

31. A Swiftly Tilting Planet – Madeleine L’Engle

32. A Wind in the Door – Madeleine L’Engle

33. Many Waters – Madeleine L’Engle

34. Power of Three – Diana Wynne Jones

35. A Snowball in Hell – Christopher Brookmyre

36. Smoke and Mirrors – Neil Gaiman

37. The Margarets – Sheri S Tepper

38. The Sorrows of an American – Siri Hustvedt

39.  Little Brother – Cory Doctorow

40. Black Maria – Diana Wynne Jones

41. Coraline – Neil Gaiman

Plus I read the System of the World trilogy again (need to do it at least once a year), a bunch of comics (which don’t count), and other rereads because I can rarely be bothered to behave.  Back to gardening and website design now, guilt partially assuaged.

23. The Glass Books of the Dream-Eaters – G W Dahlquist

No 3 in the 5k read.  Purchased on spec in the whole 3 for 2 thing that Borders and Waterstones are so very fond of.  And bloody good it was too (the sequel is the next book).  This is a stylistic triumph, a great fun read, set in an unnamed northern European state in the nineteenth century.  Through jilted fiancee Miss Celestia Temple we discover a grand conspiracy involving The Process, which exercises a form of mind control, together with erasing moral scruples, and a method of capturing memories in blue glass books.  Miss Temple, one of the most formidable heroines I have encountered in a while, joins forces with Cardinal Chang, a disfigured assassin and Dr Svenson, a German attache to the Prince of Macklenburg.  The unlikely trio are all affected by the Glass Book conspirators and join forces to bring them down.

Again, another convoluted and frankly daft plot which does not lend itself to succinct summary but the joy the author takes in pushing the lunacy just as far as it will stand is where the joy lies.  The villains are deliciously evil and over the top – the supremely beautiful, appallingly vicious Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, the enormous Comte d’Orkancz, inventor of the glass process, Francis Xonck, dissolute armaments heir to name but a few, entrapping the brightest and best of Europe to further their own nefarious ends – it’s brilliant.  And there is a genuine threat and sense of danger for the protagonists with a relentless pace throughout and excellent set pieces with steam punk machinery, great gothic mansions, airships, opulent hotels and any amount of polymorphously perverse sexuality.  

Blimey, these reviews are getting briefer and briefer – anyone bothering to read them must be supremely grateful.  Go on – read this book.  I hear  the publishers made a huge loss on their $2 million advance to the author so they’d be awfully grateful for the additional revenue.

22. Matter – Iain M Banks

Second in the 5k read.  How I love the novels of Iain M Banks.  I seriously doubt my ability to summarise him in any way but damn they’re good.  Space opera ahoy!  

This is a novel of the Culture, Banks’ utopian futuristic society which does very little except revel in hedonistic excess and also meddles constantly in other societies through its Contact division, especially Special Circumstances (read: Special Ops).  The action focuses on Sursamen, a shell world left behind by the Involucra, an inscrutable and extinct race.  Shell worlds are like Russian dolls, spheres inside spheres, with each layer inhabited by different races.  The action initially concentrates upon the humanoid inhabitants of the eighth and ninth levels, the Sarl and the Deldeyn, who are duking it out for supremacy.  As the Sarl become victorious their king is murdered by his right hand man, Tyl Loesp, the king’s eldest son witnessing this murder and fleeing for his life and the king’s younger son becoming the heir apparent, with Tyl Loesp as Regent and the people unaware of his crime.  Far away, the king’s daughter was adopted by the Culture many years before and has become an agent for Special Circumstances.  Upon learning of the death of her father she returns to pay her respects.  Meanwhile, excavations at the ancient cataracts of Hyeng-zhar have revealed a mysterious artefact of great interest to the Oct, the caretaking species for the whole of Sursamen.  Complications ensue.

Don’t worry if that sounds impossibly convoluted – it is.  It’s a lengthy novel with plenty of time given to fleshing out all the various characters and their motivations and the relative morality of each.  And there’s an awful lot of explosions as well.  It’s exactly what you expect and demand of an Iain M Banks novel – plenty of musings, plenty of action, lots of entertainment.    If you haven’t read any – go on.  You won’t regret it.  Although you might want to ease in gently if you’re not a sci-fi buff because it can get awfully technical.

I’m sorry, that’s about all I can say of any intelligence because of the screaming pain in my upper jaw.  I’ll try to focus on the next one but I doubt the chances.

21. Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman

OK, on to the good stuff.  This is the first in the 5k read, a collection of short stories by the great Neil Gaiman, who I’ve been reading for nearly twenty years and who hasn’t managed to bore me yet.  This is a pretty breezy read, it’s 409 pages squared away in just a couple of hours, but there was some truly enjoyable stuff in it.  As with all the short story collections I’ve enjoyed, I think I’m going to have to read it again to get the stories properly embedded in my head but a few things stuck with me.  A Study in Emerald is a clever juxtaposition of Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft and actually genuinely creepy.  October in the Chair is a cute little concept of the months of the year sitting round a campfire telling stories.  Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire (really) was daft but fun.   Keepsakes and Treasures was nasty and amoral and I liked it.  Harlequin Valentine was an excellent tumblers’ affectation.  The Problem of Susan addressed C S Lewis’ nasty dismissal of Susan Pevensey in The Last Battle and was probably my favourite story.  Sunbird was also nasty and fun.  Finally, the Monarch of the Glen is a little addendum to American Gods, with a glance at Beowulf for good measure.

OK, that’s a bit of a race through it all but this was a fun piece and kept me entertained when my back was basically trying to cry it’s way through my skin.  That worked for me.

20. Slam – Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby wrote a Young Adults novel.  It’s a term I hate and it’s definitely the Nick Hornby novel I like least of all.  So here we go.

Sam is  a sixteen year old skateboard enthusiast who falls abruptly into a passionate love affair with the beautiful Alicia, just as abruptly falls out of love with her, but manages to get her knocked up in the interim (and he kind of knows about it I should mention).  His mother had him when she was sixteen so he knows how big a deal this is so he promptly runs away to Hastings (lame, proto-seaside location), as you do, finds it appalling and runs back to face up to responsibilities.  Along the way, he gets morphed into the future through the magical interference of his poster of Tony Hawks (really).

I have a couple of problems with all this.  Firstly, the character of Sam is portrayed with an affectless naivete which renders him almost moronic – I’m the first to concede that teenagers, both male and female, frequently have not got a great deal going on up top (I know, having been a particularly brainless exemplar of the species in my own time), but this takes the biscuit. Sam is apparently unaware of the mechanics of impregnation, clueless about the particulars of said pregnancy and is hugely lacking in empathy for his erstwhile girlfriend, instead preferring a form of class warfare against her parents.

Next, there is at no time a discussion of alternatives available to the happy couple.  I am not going to suggest that abortion is a marvellous or happy thing, but it is a viable and often extremely sensible alternative to completely ruining your youthful life plans and yet modern squeamishness refuses to address it in any sensible, measured way without having the screaming abdabs.  Honestly, when last in any piece of fiction do you remember someone having an abortion and it being the right thing to do?  Never, that’s right.  In this determinedly downbeat piece, at no point does Alicia even entertain the possibility of just not having the damn thing.  The miracle of sodding life you see.

Yes, again, I am in a terrible mood, but this pretty much captures my feelings at the time of reading so I’m probably only being a tiny bit more terse than I might normally be.  Also, it’s unremittingly gloomy outlook is pretty trying.  In contrast to my previous statement about abortion, a pregnancy really needn’t be the end of the world but Hornby is clearly wholly convinced of the entire horribleness of it all.  I guess it’s targeted at sexually active teens, a bit of a message novel, and it really thumps home hard.  Were I still a teen, I think I would be insulted by such an obvious tactic – and also bored.  Bit less heavy with the morals please Hornby.

19. The Savage Garden – Mark Mills

So, I had almost decided to recuse myself from this (not entirely certain that’s the right word for the job but I’ve always wanted to use it, so there we are), since I’ve been busy writing my own stuff and when that happens I do rereads rather than new reads, so not terribly applicable, and I certainly wasn’t going to get into the February 5k thing when last Tuesday my back started playing a merry tune of agony and I found myself laid flat upon it for four days.  During which I read five books.  So I guess I’m back in the game.

Unfortunately, before I can post those five, I need to get a couple of prior reviews (that, honestly, I couldn’t be bothered to do) up.  And, while my back is better, I am currently on industrial strength painkillers in advance of the root canal I’m having next week to resolve my excruciating toothache.  So if I don’t make sense – live with it.

OK, part of the reason I didn’t review either of the next two books with any despatch is because not only did I not like them much, I was disappointed by them.  I read Mark Mills’ first novel, the Whaleboat House and I found it really  intriguing and well-written, a good take on the mystery genre and I was keen to see what he would do next.  What he did was this trite little nonentity, much of which I can’t remember and I’ve given the book back to my sister in law so you’ll have to forgive my abridged summary.

Basically, it’s set in Italy in the fifties, a graduate Oxbridge student is sent by his enigmatic tutor to review an old Contessa’s garden for his dissertation, he realises that the garden represents a puzzle, a murder mystery of sorts, he proceeds to solve that mystery and the modern day mystery of the upper crust Italian family he is staying with.  Along the way in falls in love with the blahdidiblah free-spirited, independent, beautiful daughter of the family and is effectively seduced by the whole lifestyle and beauty of the aristocratic Italian way of life.  The End.

If that seems like a dismissive summary it’s probably because that’s how the novel reads, as if the writer genuinely couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to his own story.  Sacrificing the minute attention to detail he sets up a frankly preposterous notion of a garden that tells the story of a sixteenth century murder (why?), chucks in WWII cliches aplenty, tells us how to feel about it, then buggers off.  

I doubt I will be bothering with Mr Mills ouevre further.  And yes, I am extremely grumpy and taking out on a writer for being average rather than good.  I wonder how many critics write with toothache – seems like they all do sometimes.  I suddenly feel an abrupt sympathy for the miserable bunch of sods.

18. Middlemarch – George Eliot

The first copy I ever had of A Room With a View had a postcript that I’ve never seen since, a snide little epilogue detailing the prosaic details of Lucy Honeychurch’s married life, a salutary reminder of why there is usually more going on in an E M Forster novel than the pretty pretty Merchant Ivory-ists would have you believe.  Middlemarch has a similar epilogue and it bookends neatly with the overwrought prologue in its reduction of the protagonists’ youthful desires to the gently quotidian, where a quiet, productive life free from debt and despair is the most than can be hoped for, and a great deal more than most achieve.  How did I not know about this book?  How have I missed it?  Yes, Jane Austen is fabulous, yes, I yield to no man in my love for E M Forster, yes the drama of the Brontes is pretty stirring, but this is one of the best books I have ever read, and I’ve always been told it was a boring sermon about a town in which nothing much happens.  Clearly, those of my friends who aspire to be book critics should be shot.

I don’t know much about George Eliot, although I have an odd notion that I used to know a good deal more and have somehow jettisoned the knowledge as irrelevant.  I read The Mill On The Floss at school and was severely let down by the utter cop out ending (yep, it’s a spoiler, but if you come to it forewarned you might not feel too  hard done by.  My English teacher recommended it to me and when I came to her bitching about the ending she just giggled and said that most people felt that way.  Yep, my saintly old English teacher stitched me up.  Best teacher I ever had – kisses to you Miss Mitchell, wherever you and your wall-eyed, wasp-tongued demeanour may be).  I think I understand what Eliot was up to a little better now but I still contend that she bottled in the final act.  Anyway, having always been supreme at grudge holding, I failed to forgive her for this let down and have since read no Eliot, until this one obtruded upon my notice in the form of one of those oh-so-hard-to-resist £2 Wordsworth Classics which are padding my ‘to read’ list so thoroughly at the moment.  

It’s a daunting prologue, referencing St Theresa of Avila (had she referenced the Liseux version I might have quit then and there – she tortured my early teens as the nuns tried to kick-start non-existent vocations with repeated references to how marvellous she was for abandoning her dying father and walling herself up in a convent) and admiring her yearning to achieve epic apotheosis, contrasted with the impossibility of achieving that kind of grandeur in our modern lives.  The novel was written in 1872 but begins at the end of 1829, a crucial period of governmental reform, one of the stepping stones leading to universal suffrage, the theme of reform and the motivations of those who seek it being an underlying current throughout the book.  

I was pretty daunted by that prelude; I have a notion that Eliot was pretty religious (and I will read up on her to clarify my assumptions at some point), and I was pretty nervous that a very worthy tome was  going to occupy my attention for nearly 700 pages of very close print.  The thing is though, that the narrator that Eliot becomes in Middlemarch is primarily a gossip.  She is moral, intelligent, ironic, sympathetic and good humoured but her commentary contains a gently sardonic spice at all times.  All the protagonists (there are many of them) have a perception of themselves that is shown to be quite at odds with reality.  Only Mr Farebrother, the humorous, perceptive and impoverished rector is aware of his own shortcomings and undaunted by them, but it is through this secondary character that Eliot demonstrates the importance of a lack of self-knowledge in enabling individuals to act.  Mr Farebrother does little since he sees the outcome of all his actions, and his only truly active role is a truly heroic, Cyrano sort of self-abnegation when he speaks to Mary Garth, who he himself loves, on behalf of her childhood sweetheart and all round loveable scamp, Fred Vincy.  

There are a number of stories at play in this novel but the primary actors are: Dorothea Brooke, later married to the hideous old stick Mr Casaubon, and her relationship with Mr Casaubon’s nephew, Will Ladislaw; Tertius Lydgate, a revolutionary sort of young doctor, a very remote twig on the nobility tree, newly arrived in Middlemarch and setting up a practice with all sorts of revolutionary medical notions, who then becomes romantically entangled with Rosamond Vincy, daughter of a moderately prosperous, wholly respectable local pillar of the community; Rosamond’s brother, Fred Vincy, recently graduated, unable to find a decent prospect and hopelessly in love with the resolutely plain and unromantic Mary Garth, daughter of a wholly well-intentioned and savagely hard working estate manager and former governess.  Supporting actors are Mr Bulstrode, banker, self-satisfied philanthropist and Methodist, Mr Brooke, Dorothea’s uncle and a very well-intentioned, wholly muddle-headed parliamentary hopeful, Mr Garth, Mary’s father, and the deeply unpleasant Mr Featherstone, dying slowly and gleefully using the potential contents of his will to sow familial discord, with a loose Greek chorus provided by local dignitaries.  

There is a great deal that does not happen in Middlemarch.  Great scandals do not ensue.  People die, but they do so undramatically.  No affairs take place.  No one becomes bankrupt and no one unexpectedly inherits great sums (well, one character does but as he is entirely incidental I think the point holds).  When the dashing young nephew of the withered Mr Casaubon becomes enamoured of his uncle’s beautiful young wife, you think you know how this will end and what the crises of that couple are to be.  You do not.  When dashing Dr Lydgate and the beautiful Miss Vincy begin flirtations, it’s obvious that someone’s heart is to be broken, but it is not.  Middlemarch continuously delivers tiny, charming surprises, the kind that help you notice how accustomed we are to the tropes of modern literature, the expectation that the romantic entanglement will always be the most significant, the deus ex machina of inherited or otherwise glibly acquired money, the ability of most characters to abandon principle for self-fulfilment.  These characters struggle and are never offered easy escapes; they must weight what is most dear to them at all times and make necessary sacrifices.  The passage quite near the beginning where Caleb Garth is obliged to sacrifice his son’s private education since he good-heartedly underwrote a debt for Fred Vincy, his daughter’s potential husband, is almost too hard to read since Fred is guilty only of youthful stupidity and failure to foresee consequences, and the whole novel is made up of such moments, where the protagonists find themselves drearily trapped by circumstance, yet still capable of complete humanity and eminently pitiable.

The class aspects of the novel are also excellently done.  The British are often derided for their class-consciousness, and I’ve entertained myself with it a great deal in the past but here it is hard to consider this to be a peculiarly British mentality.  I think small town is a universal concept, and the mistaken perceptions of the characters, particularly the women is used to great good effect here.  Dorothea has romantic notions of being a true helpmeet to her husband and so confers her fancy upon an ageing, ineffective scholar, convinced that she can aid him in his quest for greatness, while he is merely marrying since he fancies it is the sort of thing he ought to do.  Rosamond Vincy is attracted to Tertius Lydgate as much because of his good family, which he despises, as for his self, and entertains elaborate fantasies of inveigling herself into upper class society through marriage to him.  Mrs Cadwallader, the rector’s wife, is lauded for her parsimony since she comes from such a good family and is therefore considered eccentric rather than offensive.  Mr Brooke’s parliamentary ambitions and desire for reform (by which he may advance the cause of his fellow man) is undermined by his shocking estate management, which has driven his tenants to poverty and despair.  This is not a novel of the underbelly of human life but I think it was fairly remarkable at the time since it concerned itself neither with the upper echelons of society, nor with the emerging industrial classes, but instead detailed the lives of those who had to work for a living, noting their envy for the leisured sorts and their clutching at both respectability and affluence, the two often seeming irreconcilable.  In the outcomes there is some originality as well, since ultimately a happy ending is one in whihc companionship and hard work feature prominently, rather than the more conventional outcome where the poor heroine never has to work a day in her life again (yes, Mr Rochester was maimed, but hell, he was still RICH, wasn’t he?  And Jane had her own fortune anyway.  As the most romantic of cultures, Victorians were of course ultimately the most terrifying pragmatists).  

I know I’m appalling at these reviews and I’ve already gone on excessively but I’m desperately trying to nail what makes this such a good book.  I think it is a gentle read, in that it keeps the action within a narrow range, without extremes, but within that range it finds a sardonic, subversive tone which makes every occurrence appear a little more fraught, a little more fascinating than a bare recounting would suggest.  I think Eliot never loses sight of the fact that each of the protagonists perceives themselves as the central character in their own dramas and she uses this self-absorption to demonstrate how misguided we become when we impute feelings and motives to others, and how damaged our lives can become.  She is also a ridiculously clever writer; in beseeching sympathy from Mr Casaubon from the reader she manages to demonstrate exactly how despicable he is; by praising Dorothea to the skies she underlines her delusion; Mr Bulstrode’s hypocrisy renders him pathetic rather then criminal.

This is not an easy or a quick read and I know there are many people who find it boring and pointless but I cannot recommend it highly enough.  I love to read but I’m fully aware of my own limitations, most of which boil down to being a whole hell of a lot less clever and a whole hell of a lot more lazy than I make out to be.  I shy away from ‘big’ reads and I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of good stuff as a consequence.  Still, this is an example of why you should form your own opinions and not let others’ prejudices carry you away.  The only equivalent experience I can remember is when I discovered Salman Rushdie last year, after years of my mother telling me he was unreadable.  I was also worried I think that Eliot might turn out to be Hardy in a dress and there are very few words available to express how appalling I find Hardy (I’m a west country girl, so he was spoiled for me early on).  I’m just pleased I never came to this through a television adaptation or A level text.  This was pure enjoyment, and if nothing else, I am grateful to the Cannonball Read for introducing me to such a gem.

OK, now I’m going to take a break and chew up some murder mysteries my lovely sister-in-law has lent me.  I think that attempting to digest any more hefty meat would only have unpleasant consequences, so hopefully I can get my numbers up a bit over the next few days with some of these titles.  I certainly have an awful lot of ground to make up; this is a tough competition.  And that’s why the written word is so exciting.

17. Spilling the Beans – Clarissa Dickson Wright

Ah, the Two Fat Ladies.  Proof that the class system still works.  Honestly, I enjoyed their programmes back along when but that probably had a great deal to do with the fact that I was living with my mother at the time, she’s potentially the largest snob in the Western Hemisphere (and she travels a lot so the Eastern gets a bit of face time too) and so her warm and fuzzy approval probably influenced me.  And they were large and batty and on a motorbike with a sidecar.  What’s not to love?  Well, plenty actually, especially if this torrid trawl is anything to go by.  I’m going to write this up and move on.  Clarissa Dickson Wright holds no more interest for me.

CDW, as she will hereafter be known, was REALLY born to privilege and she had a really shitty life. It kind of boils down to that, and it’s written in that clunky autobiographical prose of ‘this happened, then the next thing happened, then something else happened.  I was happy/sad/drunk’, which really palls after a very short while. Daddy was a top surgeon.  Mummy was an Australian heiress.  Daddy was a bit of a boozer and AWFULLY violent.  Mummy was a silver spooned saint.

CDW was driven for no very good reason.  She became the youngest female ever called to the bar (not as great an achievement as it sounds since at the time you didn’t have to get a degree beforehand, but still, not bad).  Mummy died.  CDW drank.  And drank.  And drank.  And if nothing else, you have to admire her rock bottom reaching capability, because she was the ‘bottle of gin to get out of bed’ rather than the ‘bottle of wine per evening’ sort of social alcoholic.  In fact, the fatness is due to a failure of her adrenal gland caused by the drinking.  That’s commitment to the cause.  And then she twelve-stepped and blah blah blah, doh-si-do, and through it all the power of cooking is what really kept her going.

Oh, what’s that you say, it sounds like I don’t like her?  No, I don’t really.  She had a really crap father and she clearly was devastated when her mother died but she really did self destruct quite spectacularly and I know we’re supposed she was programmed to do so through the miracles of nurture but it just becomes a little hard to empathise, and that possibly is due in large part to the flatness of the writing, which never engaged me to the point where I actually gave a damn about her internal anguish.  Next up, there’s her impeccable country credentials (she grew up in London, naturally) in which she slams all those ridiculous people who want to to ban hunting and titles.  Now, our government sucks on many levels and the ban on fox hunting was undoubtedly vote hunting and problematic on a number of levels, but there is nothing more guaranteed to bring me out in fury than the privileged sorts (read: The Countryside Alliance) complaining about losing their privileges.  Yep, as someone who actually GREW UP in the country, I can testify about the nastiness of foxes, but I can also testify that fox hunting does fuck-bloody-all (a technical term) to reduce their numbers.  Sorry, I’m going to hop off this soapbox now.

Oh, and Jennifer Patterson was always the more loopy and therefore more amusing of the two.  Turns out she was a raging lush, not so much of a revelation there, but I could maybe have enjoyed her autobiographical company a little more.  Oh, and CDW sees ghosts, and is very dippily spiritual, which is is a definite fingernail/blackboard interface scenario for me.  Blech.

So, I’m bored writing about a book I didn’t like.  Moving on.  It’s taken a little while to get this posted and it will be a while before the next one goes up because I’m deep in Middlemarch at the moment and a couple of things mitigate against it being finished in a big hurry.  1) it’s really long. 2) it’s fantastic and I don’t want to miss anything.  So if it takes a long time to get it up take an interim recommendation: READ MIDDLEMARCH.  It’s so good.  It’s the kind of good I expect when people talk about modern classics and end up crying with boredom.  This actually delivers.  It’s like when I discovered Salman Rushdie (you haven’t read any?  Go, go now, I mean it).

There, that’s washed away the tedious taste of confessional autobiography.  Enough capitalisation.  I’m off to write a short story, due in my class on Monday.  Yeah, I’ve only had four weeks to do it.  I will never, never learn.  It’s supposed to be on the subject of ‘journeys’.  One of the marvellous things about this class is the teacher’s overwhelming lack of imagination.  Each lesson, she fills me with glee, not least because she hates me so very, very much.  As you can probably tell, I can’t wait until term starts again.

16. Hard Times – Charles Dickens

Books are expensive, even second-hand books.  I’m usually a keen re-reader so I get huge value out of the (admittedly large) number of books I do purchase.  Still, as the workshy layabout that I am there is a point at which I really need to economise and that’s where Wordsworth Classics come in, bless ’em.  On the plus side – they’re all £2.  On the less good side (for the purposes of this exercise), they’re all classics and some of them are enormous.  Mr Walker wholly approves of them since his cheerful philistinism gauges the worth of a purchase by the cubic inch, and he has a point.  And lets face it, I’m sufficiently behind in numbers that I might as well not fret about getting further behind due to the length of the reads.  Anyway, I have a sackful of them to plough through, interspersed with some slightly less hefty beasts, because I have no illusions about my own staying power.  For the same reason, I didn’t buy any of the really tricky titles.  I’m a lazy sod.

And in that spirit, I started with Hard Times, Dickens’ shortest novel.  I’ve read Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol and the BBC fetishises him with loving remakes every year (I’ve got Bleak House and Little Dorrit cued up – don’t know whether having seen the series will make the reads more or less straightforward) and I know he’s Nick Hornby’s favourite, and I’m a fan of Hornby but – well, I love E M Forster with an ungodly passion and he really slammed poor Dickens in Aspects of the Novel and so I took the path of least resistance and shunned one of the most prolific Victorian novelists around.  Remember the laziness?

I’m not saying anything about the book am I?  OK, my feeling is that Dickens was simply unable to write a short novel, so this, while clocking in at a good couple of hundred of pages of close type, really feels like a short story and was certainly easily digestible.  In essence it’s a fable about the requirement of fantasy in existence.  Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby are the most solid burghers in Coketown, a mythical northern industrial town, Mr Gradgrind a kindly enough sort who nonetheless insists on the teaching of facts and only facts, to the loss of all imaginative pursuits (the novel opens on him instructing the new schoolteacher, M’Choakumchild, surely the most ridiculously direct name in the novel).  Circumstances cause Gradgrind to adopt Sissy Jupe, a circus performer’s daughter and she is introduced into his airless household as a bastion of all things good, true and above all, imaginative and immediately becomes an object of fascination to Louisa Gradgrind, the beautiful, cold daughter of the house.  Bounderby, Gradgrind’s peer, has clearly been grooming Louisa for his wife for some years and yes, that is exactly as distasteful as it sounds.  Louisa, rendered icily null by her father’s determination to protect from all imaginative pursuits accepts his eventual proposal in order to further her utterly repulsive brother, Tom’s interests, a fact he takes exactly zero notice of, because he’s a repulsive little tick.  

OK, that’s the kick off.  Once married, the situation relocates to Mr Bounderby’s establishment, presided over by the noblewoman brought low, Mrs Sparsit who, wholly unsurprisingly, is none too pleased with her new mistress.  Events take a turn with the introduction of Mr Harthouse, a bored young socialite, who attempts a flirtation with Louisa essentially as a diversion.

In another thread we have Stephen Blackpool, a worker at the Coketown factory, a good man with a really crappy wife who is in love with someone else and when he petitions Bounderby for advice is told in no uncertain terms that a divorce is entirely impossible and sends him back to his miserable existence.

OK, this is far more exposition that I care to reveal so I’ll leave the plot development at that.  To be honest, you can see where most of it is going, although there are a few twists and turns.  Essentially though, it’s not about the plot so much as it is about being told that cold hard pragmatism will only take you so far in life.

I think I understand the problem Forster had with Dickens, and I also understand why it needn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the novels.  Forster was a tentative sort, carefully trying to puzzle out human interactions and motivations.  Every character got a chance at being a person.  Dickens has no interest in creating rounded characters in that way but that doesn’t really disqualify him from the possibility of nuance.  The character of Louisa is a good case in point.  It’s true that, according to Forster’s criticism, she can be summed up in a sentence: a beautiful, intelligent young woman, chafing under the limitations of her restricted upbringing and surroundings.  The point is, while she doesn’t act particularly outside the limitations of that role, it’s perfectly possible to read a great deal of interest into her – the potential for empathy is huge.  Bounderby is pure caricature but Gradgrind and Mrs Sparsit have a bit more going on with them which holds your interest.  The really tedious characters (who don’t get much page space) are Sissy Jupe, and Rachael, Stephen Blackpool’s love interest.  They are wholly good and wholly uninteresting.  Pretty sure Dickens had one of those Madonna fixation things people are so keen on mentioning.

The book goes by at a really good clip, and the narrative drive is the real fun here.  Not a great deal actually occurs but you feel the pace at all times and he certainly ‘tells a story’ to reference Forster for what I promise is the last time.  I’m even quite looking forward to the rather daunting dimensions of Bleak House and the like.  I think Dickens delights more in the journey than the outcome so that’s the spirit in which I intend to read them.  God knows what the review will be like though, since this one has already clocked 1,000 words.  I promise I’ll try to keep it short.