Lady Chatterley's Lover is actually one of my favourite books; a statement which is usually met with a raised eyebrow and a little smirk by those who know the book by reputation alone. Its sordid status comes, of course, from the censorship trial of 1960 when a jury were asked to decide whether the novel was just too obscene for public release. There are two things to remember here, folks:
a) There's actually remarkably little sex in this at all. It's not very graphic, it's not very long (*smirks*) and it's not that frequent either. The moral outrage was more about the theoretical promotion of adultery than the sex scenes themselves and readers in the 1960s were a lot more easily shocked than today; and
b) You know there are other parts to this book, right? Like, there is a story here and stuff?
Summary: In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all'. In 1960, thirty years after D. H. Lawrence's death, Penguin moved to publish his most provocative novel Lady Chatterley's Lover for the first time. What followed was the most significant literary obscenity trial of the twentieth century, as Penguin called upon a string of expert witnesses including E. M. Forster and Sir Allen Lane to triumphantly defend the book's literary merit, in a case that compellingly reflected the changing face of contemporary society.
I was expecting a short book analysing the censorship trial with maybe a few quotes thrown in for good measure, so I was initially quite disappointed when I realised that it's actually just a collection of excerpts from the trial with no commentary at all, not even an introduction.
While I'd still like to read such a book (if one exists), Lady Chatterley's Trial is still worth reading in its own right. As a quick disclaimer, I'm a lawyer. I have absolutely no idea whether this would be of interest to somebody who doesn't have a bundle of ridiculously pretentious qualifications, or if you'd have more fun using it to make a papier mache bowl. I do know that only quotes from the main hearing of the main trial are included - there aren't any dry comments on procedure, directions, process, etc. Purely the interesting parts, and as it was being aimed at a jury at the time, it's perfectly comprehensible.
</condescension>
There must be quite a lot missing as this is only 54 pages long and these hearing things (technical terms) can go on for days. Barristers aren't exactly renowned for their brevity. The gist is there, often in summarised form, but I'd have liked to have read the nitty gritty. Actually, what I'd really like is to read a transcript of the jury's deliberations, but that's not possible and never will be.
The first page states 'it is hoped that (this book) is reasonably fair to both sides.' Without seeing a full transcript I can't be absolutely positive, but it does seem that rather a lot more of the prosecution's submissions are missing than the defendant's! Their cross-examination summary is a lot shorter and less detailed. Were there really no prosecution witnesses? It's almost like Penguin were biased in favour of their own company or something...
Don't get me wrong, I realise this book was published by PENGUIN to celebrate PENGUIN'S anniversary of publishing PENGUIN books and it would be completely unreasonable to expect them to include every snippet of why they shouldn't be allowed to publish exactly what they choose. Just pointing it out :)
I actually do feel all fuzzy about Penguin now, to be honest. I knew their basic story before - that Allen Lane was shocked that the working classes couldn't afford to buy books, so he strove to publish paperbacks no more expensive than a pack of cigarettes. Without him, who knows whether books would be as widely available and affordable today. Their story is fleshed out a little more in Lady Chatterley's Trial and it really made me appreciate all the books on my shelves and that I can buy a cheap-ass paperback instead of a hardback, leatherbound monstrosity.
But of course that whole attitude is one which Penguin Books was formed to fight against, which they have always fought against, and which they will go on fighting against - the attitude that it is all right to publish a special edition at five or ten guineas so that people who are less well off cannot read what other people read. Isn't everybody, whether earning £10 a week or £20 a week, equally interested in the society in which we live, in the problems of human relationships including sexual relationships?
*spontaneous applause from the cheap seats*
I can't even really explain why I fell in love with this book so much, considering it's just a collection of quotes and summaries of speeches. Maybe it's not the book I like, but the concept. Excuse the tweeness, but it made me feel so lucky and so privileged that we live in a country where we can afford to own 300 books we haven't even opened yet, and where it's perfectly okay to publish a novel where a bored aristo has sex with the groundskeeper in the woodshed.
That's thanks to twelve (it is twelve, right? There are certain people reading this who will never let me live it down if it's not...) normal, average men and women who realised that books should never be banned because they contain a concept that you don't agree with and that Penguin Books should be commended for striving to make books available to the masses. I assume that's what they realised, anyway... perhaps they just wanted to wrap-up so they could go out for a smoke.
So a lot of you know that I'm currently in the penultimate year of training to be a barrister (the snooty lawyers in the wigs and gowns) and also that I'm in the middle of exams right now. Since I've actually had the week from hell and the Bar Standards Board seem to have a dartboard on the wall with all our faces on, I thought I'd spend a minute just explaining the general atmosphere in the Law School right now.
People are crying. I walked out of a private one-on-one exam yesterday (you're meant to sit in Conference with a 'client,' ask them some questions and then advise them on plea) and found a friend sat in the corridor crying because the actor the Law School uses had changed his plea halfway through and so all the advice she had planned was incorrect. I think mine was supposed to be mentally incompetant as he started sobbing halfway through and kept interrupting me because he didn't understand. As I had to keep repeating myself, I didn't reach the advice section of my plan which you're meant to do twelve minutes in and I hadn't when the moderator cut me off at fifteen.
The actors receive their briefs and they act as they have been instructed, which is great. But we haven't been told how to deal with any of these situations. We were thrown in at the deep end with straightforward cases and nice, happy clients... but for the exams they throw random situations at us that we haven't been trained to deal with.
Apparently there were four different actors and every single one caused their students to leave either in tears or pale and shaking. I asked two different people how Conference exams went and they just shook their heads at me, wide-eyed.
Furthermore, Professional Ethics on Monday was even worse. Half the questions on that paper (literally) we hadn't been taught. Oh wait, I'll rephrase that - 'we hadn't been told to teach ourselves.' There were questions on topics I didn't even know existed. In addition, there's a big scandal over it as some Law schools were shown previous papers... that had those questions on.
This is genuienly traumatic. Look, I'm a diligent, responaible student. Most of us are, to have gotten this far into our careers. I revise, I do the work, I go to bed early the night before. But to know that, whatever you do, the Bar Standard Board is going to almost ensure you don't pass this shit, it feels pretty crap. It doesn't set a good standard for the rest of the exams.
Which are ridiculous, by the way. We got no study leave as our classes only ended last Thursday, and I don't mean revision classes. They stopped 'teaching' us last week. We get no Easter holidays and the two biggest exams, the ones that encompass the entirety of Criminal law and the entirely of Civil law are two days apart and our entire grade for those modules rest on those exams.
The organisation and content of these exams is beyond a joke. Half the people have emotionally given up. They feel like there's no point, if the Bar Standards Board already have a bullseye pointed in their direction. I know it's supposed to be hard, I understand that. Weeding out the wheat from the chaff, etc etc. But I'd like to feel like I have a fighting chance at least.
You know a book's good when you fight past the oncoming drowsiness of sleeping pills at 2am, in order to just read a few more pages. Not very good for my insomnia perhaps, but I whole-heartedly think it was worth it.
Charlotte O'Keefe's beautiful, much-longed-for, adored daughter Willow is born with osteogenesis imperfecta - a very severe form of brittle bone disease. If she slips on a crisp packet she could break both her legs, and spend six months in a half body cast. After years of caring for Willow, her family faces financial disaster. Then Charlotte is offered a lifeline. She could sue her obstetrician for wrongful birth - for not having diagnosed Willow's condition early enough in the pregnancy to be able to abort the child. The payout could secure Willow's future. But to get it would mean Charlotte suing her best friend. And standing up in court to declare that she would have prefered that Willow had never been born...
I have a strange interest in medical ethics due to a module that I half-heartedly agreed to study at Law School and then loved. I love issues of consent, termination, euthanasia... anything to do with the medical world and the legal problems therein. It explains why I also loved the last Jodi Picoult book I read (my review of which is here), about a child's refusal to donate organs to her dying sister. Handle with Care is very similar, using the familiar formula of family-related medical ethics and a trial in court.
I have a fair-weather relationship with Ms. Picoult - the two books that I've read and finished I absolutely adored. However, I started both The Pact and Salem Falls and couldn't finish either of them. They deal with teenage suicide and false rape accusations respectively, and I didn't find them nearly as interesting. Admittedly it was a while ago, but it taught me to stick to the medical issue books.
Obviously, they're very similar. Both have a Mother at the heart of the legal action, a Father who doesn't agree but just wants to keep his head down, ensuing marital problems and an ignored but troubled sibling. I think that's why these books get slated so much - their similarity. But so what!? The two I've read were both amazing. I've never known novels that could pull you in and really make you care for the characters like those by Jodi Picoult. They're all real with their own personalities and flaws, and the dialogue is so believable that you have to remind yourself that it isn't a documentary.
But whereas I liked the ending of My Sister's Keeper, I didn't like it here. I saw the 'twist' coming, but only because I'm familiar with her previous books. It reads like she shovelled it in purely because she needed a shocking ending to match those in all her books. It just didn't feel necessary.
I particularly liked this book because it raised a few personal issues. In case you haven't gathered from my continuous yet subtle hints, I'm taking my Bar course next year to study to be a lawyer. The attorney in this case, Marin, disagrees with the whole concept of Charlotte's case whole-heartedly; she thinks it's repulsive and immoral. However, she;s bound to represent her case regardless of her own views. For me, this is an issue I've struggled with a few times - could I represent someone whose beliefs or actions thoroughly offended my own?
What it boils down to, in the end, is that every single review is going be biased depending on your moral standpoint and circumstances. I've read several where the reviewer thinks people like Charlotte O'Keefe should be steralised at birth and therefore see the entire plot concept as ugly and offensive. I've also read others more sympathetic to her financial situation and emotional struggles who therefore enjoyed the book more.
As for me... I loved the book and completely understood Charlotte. The beauty of Jodi Picoult's writing lies in the continuous switching of narrative, which results in a full understanding of the thought processes of each character. In Handle with Care you see the reasoning of both the defendant and claimant, and therefore (ideally) sympathise with both. Although I can understand why what Charlotte did was controversial, it was Sean and his naivety that irritated me more. If it came right down to it, I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same.
So, just to continue with my apparent 'parents-who-make-terrible-medical-decisions-for-their-children' phase, today we have My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. See also my review of The Adoration of Jenna Fox here, while I try terribly hard to nip my growing obsession in the bud.
Sara and Brian are devasted when they can't find a donor for Kate, their little girl with leukemia. So, in desperation, they have a 'designer' baby - Anna, who is the perject genetic match for Kate. They plan to only use the blood from her umbilical cord, a procedure that will neither hurt or inconvenience her. But as Kate's condition worsens, they need Anna to donate more and more.
When Anna is thirteen, her parents assume that she will willingly donate a kidney to Kate. If she doesn't, Kate will die. But Anna is fed up of feeling invisible next to Kate and sick of never being asked for consent. She goes to court to sue her parents for the right to her own body.
I first read this in 2007, and it hurt me so much that I swore blind I would never, ever read it again. I both loved and despised it for the way it hurt and moved it me, but I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. I'm not sure why I went back to it yesterday, but I'm glad I did. It's a wonderful, wonderful book.
The plot itself is very original - I've never read anything like it before. Family sagas, or whatever you want to call them, aren't my usual kind of book, but Jodi Picoult's books usually revolve around some kind of contraversial issue (designer babies and sacrificing one child to save another, in this case) and involve legal aspects and a court case, and the two combined more than sustain my interest.
I pull Anna to her feet, one shoelace still untied. Dragging her out of the gymnasium, we reach the car before we say a word.
Anna scowls. 'Why did I have to leave the party?'
Because your sister is more important than cake and ice cream; because I cannot do this for her; because I said so.
I'm so angry that I have to try twice before I can unlock the van. 'Stop acting like a five-year-old,' I accuse, and then I remember that's exactly what she is.
As I said, I have read this book before, so the ending wasn't such a shock. The first time though, I cried like a child. Not one slow tear rolling slowly down my face either - full on sobbing and dribbling (attractive, right?) . I never saw it coming and I don't know anybody that did.
What makes it so clever is the way Anna never comes off as selfish, not once. Even though you know and she knows that her lawsuit would indirectly result in her sister's death, Ms Picoult makes sure you know that its not motivated by selfishness or a desperate bid for attention - its a genuine wish to have her opinions listened to. What she is doing to Kate breaks her heart, but she can't go on being used as a walking organ suppository.
On the other hand, you have her parents. Brian is unsure how he feels - he desperately wants Kate to recover, which means she needs a kidney; but he loves Anna equally and wants her opinion to be respected. Sara is adamant that Anna is just having a tantrum and constantly shouts at her to get a grip. At times she made me so angry, I'd have slapper her if she wasn't so, well, fictional.
I duck my head. 'I don't want to do it anymore.'
That ignites my mother. 'Well, you know Anna, neither do I. In fact, neither does Kate. But it's not something we have a choice about.'
The thing is, I do have a choice. Which is exactly why I have to be the one to do this.
My mother stands over me. 'You went to a lawyer and made him think this is all about you - and it's not. It's about us. All of us-'
My father's hands curl around her shoulders and squeeze. As he crouches down in front of me, I smell smoke. He's come from someone else's fire right into this one, and for this and nothing else, I'm embarrased. 'Anna, honey, we know you think you were doing something you needed to do-'
'I don't think that,' my mother interrupts.
My father closes his eyes. 'Sara. Dammit, shut up.' Then he looks at me again. 'Can we talk, just us three, without a lawyer having to do it for us?'
What he says makes my eyes fill up. But I knew this was coming. So I lift my chin and let the tears ago at the same time. 'Daddy, I can't.'
Despite this though, you never doubt that either of Anna's parents genuinely love her. That's the beauty of Jodi Picoult's wonderful writing - you can really understand the conflicting emotions behind every character and see their confusion. They each seem so real, they're never cardboard cut-outs with only one emotion.
It was made into a film a year or two ago, so I'll probably use this one for my Book to Movie Challenge. My only concern is that it stars Cameron Diaz as Sara, and she doesn't look nearly old or haggard enough. But we'll see. That's my plan for this evening, I think.
I read this first in 2009, but I picked it up again a few days ago to form part of the Books To Movie Challenge hosted by Two Bibliomaniacs. I've had the film on my shelf since reading it the first time but I figured the challenge was a sign from The Great Reader In The Sky to finally get round to watching it.
From Amazon - 'Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: what should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust?'
Okay, so first of all - THIS BOOK HAS MY NAME IN IT. This is A Huge Deal when your name is as rare as mine and you've spent your entire life being asked why you spell your name wrong. Hardly a glowing recommendation if your name's not Hanna, but mine is and so I'm going to continue to irritate those around me by reading out passages that might even vaguely be read to mean me.
Just in case my excitement over the use of my name hasn't caught on... this is one of the most moving and emotional books I've ever read. Michael's feelings for Hanna are brutally exposed and Hanna's refusal to save herself during the trial for her crimes made me want to hug her and shake her all at the same time. Hanna and Michael are the only regularly occurring characters but I'd easily agree that they have the best described personalities of any book I've ever read. They seem so real - there is no attempt to hide their flaws and the reasons behind their motivations and desires are so obvious that they don't even need to be explained.
Part of the moving nature of the book comes from the different 'voices' of Michael. Part One details his affair with Hanna - his obsession with her body, youthful desires and complete acceptance of his awkward situation sets it apart completely from Part Two. Here Michael is much older and analyses meticulously the psychology behind his relation with Hanna in the past and the present. The vocabulary is more advanced and he examines her trial from legal and moral aspects, thoroughly and honestly attributing blame where it is due. This in particular is why The Reader is so clever - the 'Michael' in each part is different, yet still recognisably developed from the other.
The summary from Amazon asks how the generation born after the War are meant to deal with the Holocaust, but this wasn't the underlining issue for me in this book.
'Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there's an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anaesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anaesthetist - do you talk to the anaesthetist?'
Hanna could not possibly have committed the crimes for which she is on trial due to a secret shame she holds. Revealing this secret would drastically reduce her sentence in prison, but she holds firm and continues to guard herself. Michael must choose whether to enlighten the court or protect Hanna's secret and save her from a life-time in prison. I'm amazed this didn't feature in the summary, as for me this moral issue is the fundamental point of the book.
In addition to the moral issues, the legal principles also interested me - possibly because the glow from my recently acquired Law degree hasn't yet worn off. There's one thing I don't understand though - retroactive justice has always (since the 1700s) been seen as unjust and renders any action unindictable. When Hanna and the other women were guards at that camp, their actions were perfectly legal and were only defined as 'crimes' after the fact. This is 'Victor's Law' and so the whole trial would have been invalid.
I know, I know, it's fiction... but I had a morbid enthusiasm for war crimes during University :)
