The First Person and Other Stories

by Ali Smith

So far, I liked every book by Ali Smith that I read. Her novels are great. But it is the short stories where she excels. And this short book of short stories is a treasure.

In The Child, the cherub-like creature is found sitting in the Waitrose shopping trolley. Just wait till the infant starts talking.
In The History of History, the schoolgirl writes a newspaper report of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, while her “mother’s gone mad”.
In Writ, the narrator comes home from work only to discover her fourteen-old-self sitting there. Again.
In The Third Person she takes the art to the extreme: it is several stories, none has either beginning or end.

“All short stories long”, she writes. I am not sure about that. But all short stories by Ali Smith long.

All short stories long. This one is about two people who have just gone to bed together for the first time. It’s autumn. They met in the summer. They’ve done it, they’ve shrugged themselves out of their shy clothes at last, they've slipped in under the covers of a small double bed, they’re holding each other in nothing but skin. One of them even has a quite bad cold and the other doesn’t care. Ah, love. Outside, the trees are quiet. The light is coming down. It’s five in the evening. But enough about them. It’s spring. It’s morning. In the tress the birds are singing like crazy.

Racing Car #16

by Timur Kulikov

Every block of wood has a racing car inside it and it is the task of the Cub Scout or his parents to set it free.

Michelangelo

One day, Timur brought from the Cubs a kit consisting of a wooden block and four wheels. The task was to design a racing car for a pinewood derby. So here it is. (OK the parents helped with wood carving and sanding. As a result, it looks more like a bullet train, mostly because I was fed up with carving much earlier than I thought.)

Pine wood, acrylic paint. Dimensions: 7'' x 2.5'' x 1.5''.

A Serious Man

a film by Joel & Ethan Coen

As the end credits rolled, I read the line “No Jews were harmed in the making of this motion picture”. Which is a jolly good news because you’d think some were. Nothing good happens to Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). I was hoping for some development with his sunbathing-in-the-buff neighbour, Mrs. Samsky (Amy Landecker) but no such luck. And what’s with the hideous frames? I thought these were banned long before Airplane recorded Somebody to Love. The best part is The Goy’s Teeth story — it could be a great short film on its own.

‘What happened to the goy?’
‘The goy? Who cares?’

The rest of the movie seems to be rather pointless, and not particularly funny.

Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

That’s one well-written novel — but. As much as I enjoyed the story, I found the happy (?) ending a tad unconvincing: with both husband and lover conveniently out of the country and out of the way, Nazneen finally takes her fate in her own hands. My favourite character is Nazneen’s sister Hasina, “who listened to no one”. She never appears in the book directly: we mostly know her from her letters. In the end she mysteriously vanishes. I hope she has found her true love.

Koko Kanyinda @ St Paul’s

Yesterday, Timur and I went to see Koko Kanyinda and his band at the St Paul’s Centre. At 9 pm it was practically empty! (Well, Cambridge was unbelievably empty yesterday. Too hot for going out on Friday night?). Perhaps the band was waiting for more people to come, since for half an hour nothing happened. Luckily, there was a short (impromptu) bhangra class. Bhangra is not exactly a Congolese dance style but it was a good fun anyway. And then the band began to play. After the first song, Timur asked: ‘Can we go home now?’

I have convinced him to stay for another half an hour. By the time we left, the hall was half-full and it looked like everybody was finally dancing.

The Quantum Tunnelling Telescope

by Tim Hunkin

There’s never much to look at out to sea, so why waste time with an ordinary telescope?

Indeed. This Quantum Tunnelling Telescope, created by Tim Hunkin (yes, the designer of Pink Floyd’s flying pigs and sheep), is installed at the end of the Southwold Pier. Apparently, many believe this inscription on behalf of “England Heritage” and European Onion:

England Heritage is delighted to present the Quantum Tunnelling Telescope, first tested here on Southwold pier in 1968. It was developed by the Royal Radar Establishment in their secret East Anglian laboratory at Orfordness. An astonishing achievement for the time, it exploited the latest advances in particle physics and quantum dynamics. The project was led by Dr Tim Hunkin, ably supported by Graham Norgate, Gavin Morris, Patrick Bond, Will Jackson, Ben Bourne, and Mimi Ling Yan Leung. Without such an extraordinary team the telescope would never have succeeded. In use at the government’s GCHQ, it completely changed the course of the cold war, monitoring activity in communist territories. Recently declassified, the telescope has been restored to full working order by Quinetiq, with a generous grant from the EUs crossing boundaries fund.

So, what’s on offer?

Absolutely everything you could possibly want to view through a pier telescope!

• World leaders on jet skis
• Oil rig raves
• Sizewell emergencies
• Shark attacks
• Beachuts washed out to sea
• Oil slicks
• Mermaids and dolphins
• Climate change
• Southwold’s property boom

Thaw

by Fiona Robyn

That’s it. It’s over. The last chapter of Thaw was published yesterday.

Come to think of it, I would never read Thaw if it was not serialised on a blog. Thaw it is not a comedy or fantasy or science fiction. If anything, it tries hard to be realistic. To a rather disturbing degree, I should add. The trouble is, as a whole, it is not believable. I hope you forgive me for expecting the work of fiction (that includes diary fiction too) to be believable or, at least, self-consistent.

Here’s a premise: Ruth, the author of the diary, is describing her life, writing every day for three months, all while she is deciding whether it is worth to carry on living. Why three months exactly, is anyone’s guess, but wait. From 1 March to 31 May, Ruth somehow acquired a friend, got a real (not imaginary) boyfriend, re-connected with her aunt and even started to mend her relationships with her father and his second wife. Moreover, she enrolled to and completed a beginner photography course. Very impressive achievement for a depressed person, I say.

Ruth also managed to annoy me on a different level. Sometimes she writes as the master of suspense. And some other times as if she plans her diary to be read on stage. No real person would ever write in her journal this:

People. Things. Places. Moments. Stories. All moving past in a blur of beautiful colours, as if my whole life were flashing before me.

And so, after some initial discomfort, I stopped to worry about Ruth. Yet this morning it felt weird not to read her diary. Maybe I miss her annoying me on daily basis? I think now I understand the soap addicts.