Opihr Gin with Breakfast With the Nikolides

Opihr gin is the work of Joanne Moore (she's also the distiller behind Thomas Dakin gin) and it's a great example of some of the exciting things that are happening with gin at the moment. Moore is in the enviable (and well deserved) position of master distiller for G&J Greenall (Britains second largest gin distillery) where she's proving, not that proof is really needed, that interesting gin isn't just the preserve of independent artisanal mavericks.

From what I've read, her baseline approach was to develop a gin flavour wheel (like this one Here) and look for gaps in the market on it which could then be coupled with other sources of inspiration. In the case of Opihr gin the inspiration is the spice route. There's a distinct hit of cardamom on the nose, and the finish is defined by the cubeb peppers - they're not overwhelming, but like the horseradish in the Thomas Dakin, it's a distinctive element. The packaging is equally distinctive and very much picks up on the story behind the gin.

I have a particular fondness for Opihr because it's a gin that allowed me to prove a point. It makes a perfectly good gin and tonic, but it goes particularly well with ginger ale (a gin buck). When we first had it open for customer tastings at work that's what I paired it with - and that's how I got a lot of people to realise that when they thought they didn't like gin and tonic, what they really didn't like was tonic. It was a wonderful afternoon of being able to say 'told you so'.

The other thing I really like about Opihr is that at around £22 it's a very reasonably priced premium gin. It's good to know there are interesting bottles out there for considerably less than the £30+ I'm starting to get used to paying for favourites.

Book wise it's has to be something which captures the exotic imagery of the spice route, but something that avoids too many associations with the Raj. It's altogether too easy to think of gin in terms of a vehicle to down quinine in a palatable form in the days of empire, but Ophir doesn't taste traditional enough for that. It's the botanicals that matter in this bottle and I feel they're telling a different sort of story.

Rumer Godden's spikey, uncomfortable, tales of Europeans trying to make a life in pre partition India are a different thing altogether. She celebrates the country and its indigenous culture all the while using it to highlight the tension caused by the inevitable clash with European ideas and customs. Everything is always on the cusp of change, and that seems right for such an individual sort of gin.

An Episode of Sparrows - Rumer Godden

'An Episode of Sparrows' is the second of the current Rumer Godden's that Virago have released as part of their children's fiction series. It was originally published on an adult list but it makes sense as a children's book. It makes me think of 'The Secret Garden' but the way I remember it as a child where it was very much Mary's story rather than as I found it more recently - very much Colin's story.

In this case the lost child is Lovejoy Mason, her mother, a singer of questionable morals and with no noticeable sense of responsibility has fallen on hard times and basically dumped Lovejoy with her landlady, no money, and no forwarding address. The landlady is kind enough but she has her own concerns, a child, especially one as strangely adult as Lovejoy can be is more than she really feels she can cope with. For Lovejoy there's nothing, she has nothing of her own to speak of, no family, and only the kindness, or otherwise, of those around her to rely on.

It's post war London, and whilst the streets are still punctuated by bomb sights I think rationing has ended so I'm guessing the book is set when it was written around 1955. Lovejoy lives on a slightly slumy street that is attached to one of those swish London squares complete with an enclosed central garden. The residents of either are worlds apart rather than yards, though for the residents of the square it's a world of disintegrating privilege.

Everything is sparked off by a fallen packet of cornflower seeds. A very small boy (Sparky) finds the packet but makes the mistake of examining it in plain view - it's promptly grabbed by Lovejoy who becomes obsessed with the idea of growing them, she casts around for a suitable spot to make a garden finally finding a place in an old bomb site. She steals odd seeds from packets in Woolworth's to plant, and steals from the church candle box to buy a trowel and fork. Sparky gets his revenge on Lovejoy - who hates with a passion - when he tells the 13 year old Tip Malone and his gang of feral boys that Lovejoy is appropriating their patch. They may be children but it's dangerous, boys and girls don't much mix and when they do it's very much the worse for the girls. Within minutes the embryo garden is destroyed. For Tip however there is remorse, and so he helps Lovejoy create another garden and that in turn leads to all sorts of problems - and then solutions.

A garden, the joy of watching living things grow, a trio of children who need each other to make sense of an often unfriendly adult world, and a certain amount of faith - these are the things that remind me of 'The Secret Garden' but Godden is a very different sort of writer and what she brings to this is quite distinct from Burnett, in some ways it's more truthful, but it's also a redemptive story with a much wider scope and the result works for adults and children alike. In her preface Godden says the germ of the story came from an actual incident which happened to her not long after she moved back to England in 1945, it took ten years to grow into this novel - it was worth waiting for.

The Dark Horse - Rumer Godden

I managed to mark the start of spring with a nasty cold, it was bad enough to keep me sofa bound for a couple of days which if I'm entirely honest I quite enjoyed despite the runny nose and throat that felt like it had been sandpapered - this had a lot to do with the unexpected arrival of a parcel from Virago books. In it were a brace of Rumer Godden's - 'An Episode of Sparrows' and 'The Dark Horse' which looked like just the thing to cheer up someone feeling distinctly under the weather.

Both are part of Virago's series for children/young adults which they launched a year ago. I haven't read the earlier Godden's from this series which looked like they were intended for really quite young children but the first thing to say about these two is how gorgeous the covers are. They are exquisite, the sort of books that you have to pick up. I started with 'The Dark Horse' (nuns and racehorses turned out to be an irresistible combination) which brings me to the second thing I have to say - I have no clear idea of what makes a children's book. In this case I'm taking Virago's word for it but there's no child protagonist or anything else to make it obvious to me. My own reading career went from mostly Enid Blyton to the likes of Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, and Terry Pratchett none of which are unsuitable for 13 year olds but are all just as likely aimed at 30 year olds. In short I missed out on that middle faze which is probably why the idea of 'young adult' fiction baffles me a bit.

'The Dark Horse' is apparently based on a true story, Dark Invader is a classic looking racehorse picked up in Ireland by a spoilt young owner and taken over to England, he performs well in his first race but disappoints after that and is consequently sold to an Indian owner and shipped out to Calcutta where he becomes a favourite with the crowd and turns around his fortunes, then just before the biggest race of the season he disappears. He's found in the nick of time taking sanctuary with some nuns but the question remains - will he be ready to race?

Godden (who I missed out on as a teenager, but have been delighted to discover as an adult) uses her horse tale to explore a number of other issues. Written in 1981 but set in the 1930's 'The Dark Horse' mostly deals with issues of redemption and prejudice. Dark Invader's new owner is a Mr Leventine, he may be Jewish, he's definitely an outsider despite his impressive wealth, it seems it's not easy to buy your way into Calcutta society. His trainer is John Quillan a young man of excellent family who gave up a promising career in the army when he married a Eurasian woman. This marriage has  estranged him from his family, also bars him from Calcutta society, lays quite a stigma on the couples many children, and has generally made John extremely sensitive. Mr Leventine also imports Dark Invader's 'lad' an over the hill jockey by the name of Ted Mullins who has lost his licence to race, lost his wife to influenza, and has a drink problem to boot. Finally there are the nuns, sisters of poverty who do their best to help Calcutta's many poor headed up by the enigmatic sister Morag who is determined to do what she can to help the needy. Add to all that wonderfully evocative descriptions of Calcutta and its racing scene and then wonder at how it's all packed into a couple of hundred pages.

In the end all the characters who need redemption find it - Leventine who has always been generous in his way learns the satisfaction of charity, Mullins finds a purpose he lost when his wife died, and Quillan - who's marriage is happy despite what it cost him - finds people who will accepts his family despite their mixed race heritage. The nuns also get what they need (after observing that god helps those who help themselves).

I think this is a great book for younger and older readers alike. It doesn't have that element of quite dark, often violent, sexuality that can make some of Godden's other books so disturbing, and that along with the happy endings and moral certainties are perhaps what marks it out as a children's book but it truly does cross over. 

My Top Ten Books of the Last Year

It's the time of year when I like to look back at the books I've read over the last twelve months and make a totally subjective choice as to which have been the ten best. It's sort of a useful exercise in so much as if I'm keeping a reading notebook (blog) I should check over it form time to time - and actually it's been a really helpful reminder of some excellent books. There was one year when this was really hard but this time I was surprised at how many really good books there were to choose from. I re-read 'Pride and Prejudice' this year but opted not to put it on the list because - well because I've read it so many times before that it didn't really feel like it should count again.

So in no particular order here are my top 10 books of the last 12 months starting with Sara Maitland's 'Gossip From The Forest'. Maitland was my introduction to feminist fiction and Virago books (many years ago) but this was the first one of hers I've picked up in a long time. It was inspirational. I've looked at trees and fairy tales differently since. As an older sister I was particularly taken with her theory that fairy tales were originally mostly told by older sisters but basically you can't beat a book that makes you look at something familiar with fresh eyes.

Amy Sackville's 'Orkney' got some mixed reviews but I loved her take on legend and folklore and the darker side of love. The older narrators obsession with one of his students becomes increasingly oppressive but also left me wondering if their marriage is imagined. The shifting light and landscape of Orkney is the perfect backdrop for Sackville's tale and I also thought she did an excellent job of catching something of the spirit of the place.

Rumer Godden's 'A Fugue In Time' is one of three of her books that I read this year, all of them wonderful and disconcerting in equal measure. I thought I knew Godden reasonably well but exploring the titles re-issued this year have made me reassess her. 'A Fugue In Time' is the least obviously shocking of the trio (no rape and no exotic Indian location) but still managed to unsettle me as a reader. It's the story of a family and their home through almost a century. For want of a better description the memories have an independent life within the house and document the small triumphs, tragedies, injustices, cruelties, and loves that go to make up a family history. It's the sort of book that begs discussion.

Helen Hull's 'Heat Lightning' was a book that far exceeded expectations, it also has a particularly good introduction. It's another multi generational look at family life (which as a description is exactly the sort of thing which will make me pass over a book) and marriage. Amy Norton's marriage has hit a rough patch and she's gone home to lick her wounds. It's the beginning of the great depression and whilst she's home her uncle and cousin come off the rails in a way that threatens to take the whole family with them, her grandmother also dies. It isn't a depressing book - Amy and her husband look like they'll be able to make things work and the family will manage to re group and carry on somehow. What's really stuck with me though is the rising sense of tension against a background of oppressive heat. This one is a real Persephone gem.

Lindsey Bareham's 'The Trifle Bowl and Other Tales' is still sitting in my books to be dealt with pile, I got nowhere near doing it justice when I wrote about it and still haven't spent much time looking at the recipes yet. One way or another (River Cottage Fruit, anything that Prospect ever choose to publish, and Fiona Cairns 'Seasonal Baking' are notable exceptions) I haven't found many really inspiring cookbooks this year. Maybe it's because I no longer have a good local bookshop to discover things in but far to many of the cookbooks I've seen this year have felt like more of the same. The Trifle Bowl stands out because it looked at equipment as much as recipes, I love my kitchen and all it's bits so a book that puts those bits front and centre really appeals to me. The kitchens we have define the way we cook, eat, and entertain, I don't like anybody else cooking in my kitchen (they do it wrong) but I loved reading about somebody else's kitchen.

Georgette Heyer's 'The Grand Sophy' probably shouldn't count in the same way that 'Pride and Prejudice' didn't count but re reading it was something of a revelation (as were all the Georgette Heyer's I re read this year). I knew she was entertaining but I'd forgotten what very positive female role models Heyer wrote. Sophy isn't conventionally beautiful, she has a temper, and she's prone to tears at inconvenient moments but she's also smart, capable, and independent. I'm very glad these were the books I was devouring when I was 14.

I'm half way through Trollope's Palliser series now and so far 'The Eustace Diamonds' is easily my favourite. Lizzie Eustace is by far the most interesting woman I've found in Trollope, had he sympathised with her just a little more the book would have been even better (in my opinion). I know it's not everybody's favourite Palliser but for once this was a moral dilemma that I could really sympathise with, one where doing the wrong thing would come very easily (I'm not to be trusted with valuable diamond necklaces) and so much happens that Trollope doesn't repeat himself as much as usual. Entertainment aside it also has a lot to say about the position of women in Victorian society and the attitude of decent but conservative men like Trollope.

When I'm next inclined to damn Christmas and all the crap that comes with it I should remind myself of how many good books appear at this tome of year - there have been some beauties in the last few weeks for which I'm truly grateful. The most hotly anticipated (on my part at least) was John Wright's 'Booze', it didn't disappoint. Wright is a charming presence on the page and the book is packed with useful and interesting things to know.

Philip Hook's 'Breakfast at Sotheby's' is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. For anybody with an interest in art this book deserves serious consideration. Looking at the art world through the art market puts a slightly different slant on things, it certainly underlines why the great public collections are so important as well as being an interesting indicator of taste.

And finally Michael Alexander's 'The Wanderer: Elegies, Epics, Riddles ('Micheal Alexander seductive is registering as a search term in my stats which I find slightly disconcerting). I expected this book to be interesting in a slightly dry sort of way so was mildly surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. I really liked Alexander's translations of Anglo Saxon poems and other fragmentary bits - there's some beautiful pieces in here, things that I'll go back to over and over (especially 'The Dream of the Rood'), it's reignited a long dormant interest in poetry and will make sitting through the second instalment of 'The Hobbit' somewhat more bearable.
 

The Peacock Spring - Rumer Godden

After a whole pile of trashy romances reading something where a happy ending wasn't the whole purpose of

the book felt good. This book doesn't have what you could really call a happy ending (sorry if that's a spoiler, but a for a book that's been around since 1975 I don't feel bad about giving away spoilers). I think most of the Rumer Godden I've read has been from earlier in her career, and though there was nothing particularly specific to tie this one to the 1970's it still felt very much like a book from the later part of the 20th century rather than the middle part. Curiously the plot is based on an incident from an earlier part of her life. Pre war Godden had run a dance school in India where she had been unusual for accepting Eurasian pupils, amongst the students there were two English girls accompanied by a Eurasian governess between whom Godden sensed a certain amount of tension, there seems to have been gossip about the girls wandering around the bazaar unaccompanied and eventually it transpired that the older girl had fallen pregnant after a relationship with one of her fathers servants.

This is basically the plot to 'The Peacock Spring'; Una and Hal Gwithiam have been pulled out of school in England to live with their respictivley widowed, and divorced father in Delhi, he's something quite grand in the united nations and although the girls and their father have always been close they sense that there's something not quite straight about this move. When they arrive they find that the governess they've been provided with is a stunningly beautiful Eurasian women - Alix Lamont - about whom there are whispers and suspicions. Alix and Una both fear and distrust each other, Una because she soon comes to understand what Alix is about, and Alix because Una is far more difficult to cope with than she had expected.

Una at 15 is in the odd inbetween stage between child and woman, old enough to see and understand more than she might like but still to young to understand the consequences of all her actions, including her affair with the poet gardener Ravi. Alix is seizing a chance for security with Sir Edward and has no intention of letting anything get in her way least of all a couple of schoolgirls but her ambitions and dissembling make her vulnerable. Alix is a difficult character, she ought to be the villain of the piece but despite her behavior she isn't quite - that role is reserved for Sir Edward.

It's Edward who pulls his daughters out of a school where they're safe, happy, and where given a chance Una could achieve her ambition of getting into Oxford to drag them across the world to lend face to the fact that he's installed his mistress in the house as their governess - a role she turns out to be basically under qualified to perform. Having got his way he's far to taken up with work and love to see what's actually happening in his house or to appreciate the effect his selfishness is likely to have on the lives of his daughters. It is, in the end, Edward who has the adult power in the family, his uxoriousness which will cause him to misuse it. Altogether it's a remarkable portrait of the point in a family's development when the child begis to understand the fallibility of their parents, begins to see the double standard between philosophy and actions and starts to judge accordingly. I'm really pleased this is back in print, Godden is to good to lose.

Breakfast With The Nikolides - Rumer Godden

My reading life generally follows a path - I'll pick up a book, and it will lead onto another, and then another,  until either it feels like I've come to the end of that particular road, or something comes along that I drop everything to read which heads me off on a new path. Occasionally though there will be a pile of books which all look so good that my reading doesn't fall into a pattern but jumps around all over the place. This is how it is at the moment and it's making me realise how much the last book I read influences how I think about the one I'm reading now. My understanding of Amy Sackville's 'Orkney' owed a lot to 'The Phantom of the Opera' and 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' was partly informed by my reaction to 'The Mussel Feast' (actually on reflection it seems that all unwittingly I've read a pile of books about unhappy domestic situations and controlling relationships this year). 

I've seen 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' referred to somewhere as a coming of age story but that's not at all how I saw it - to me it'a a book about rape. Really it's both these things and more, 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' is beautiful, perceptive, moving - essentially far to good a book to fit into one little box, but on this reading this is what I made of it...

The book opens with Emily Pool's dog escaping from the house and behaving quite erratically, before it skips back to reveal the Pool family. Charles Pool has been living alone in a Bengali back water for the last 8 years in a house that's beautiful and cared for but oddly damaged - everything has been broken at some point in the past. War has broken out in Europe and is driving his estranged wife back to him along with their two daughters - Emily and Binnie. This is not a happy family, Charles and Louise seem to hate one another and Emily's relationship with her mother is exceptionally strained. Charles doesn't know the name of his 8 year old daughter and Louise's reaction to the house she hasn't seen before is one of shocked familiarity.

India is hot and tense, there with a definite threat of violence in the air. Charles gives Emily a puppy, and it's his odd behaviour that triggers one set of events. Louise decides he's rabid and has him destroyed but tells Emily he dies in a fight with another dog whilst the children where having breakfast with the Nikolides family down the river. It's a breaking point in their already strained relationship with neither Louise or Emily capable of controlling themselves or the consequences of their actions. For Emily one part of childhood is over (so yes I guess it is a coming of age story).

Meanwhile Charles and Louise's past is slowly unravelled. Louise is a beauty but she's by no means a pleasant woman; towards the end of the book Charles tells her that she was not "reasonable, you did not want something - you wanted everything. You wanted to spend all your money and be rich, you wanted to have a child and have no worry and pain, you wanted to marry and not be married; and when it naturally didn't fall out like that you made an outcry and a moan. You wanted to be trusted and have the fun of being untrustworthy - and you did have fun, didn't you Louise? And you wanted me to be jealous - without being inconvenient." she knows, and we know it's true, her replies that he was bestial are clearly meant to lack much conviction, but Godden also makes it clear that the marriage breaks up after Charles rapes her one night.

On the one hand the reader is clearly meant to side with Charles; after 3 years of Louise's games he snaps, at some point in the encounter she submits to him - seemingly what she can't forgive about the night is that she responded to him: her revenge is to take their child and cut off all contact whilst refusing to divorce him, she keeps the (as a result) children from him whilst living in Paris where there have been lovers, and after it all she still wants him. Charles has spent the intervening years living like a monk in a re-creation of the house they shared believing himself to be as hateful as she told him he was, and yet still he wants her. I could just about have gone along with the possibility that this is Louise getting the passion she wants from her husband without having to admit to her desires but for Godden making it quite a violent rape. Charles starts by taking an axe from the wall and smashing everything in the house before dragging his wife to bed. The servants are banished, the baby screaming, the entire house desecrated - I don't believe this is a rape fantasy, which is a concept I understand but which makes me profoundly uncomfortable, it's retribution and that too is an uncomfortable idea.

On the other hand this revelation towards the end of the novel made me re-assess Louise and her actions; it's clear she hates India as much as her husband and daughters love it; her extreme reaction to the dog's suspected rabies is in part an attempt to find a reason to leave, Charles accuses Louise of smashing the house - of 'making' him do it and it's quite possible to believe that she engineered a crisis sufficient to smash up her marriage. It's another violent event that brings the couple back together, it's not a healthy relationship and neither party is blameless or without sympathy.

That's one part of a satisfyingly complex and nuanced exploration of family relationships - Louise and Emily would demand as much space again. I had thought 'Black Narcissus' would probably remain my favourite Godden but this is a real contender and generally the more I read her the more respect I have for her as a writer. 

A Fugue In Time - Rumer Godden

Of all the Rumer Godden titles Virago have just released this is the one I was most anticipating - it wasn't one I'd heard of before (though I suspect there are a good few more of those) but this one promised a brash young American turning up at her uncles house in war torn London, a history of the family including a mysterious orphan, and a love story or two which all sounded like fun. It also sounded quite a bit like 'China Court' (I thought I had blogged about 'China Court' but must have read it just before I started) which I remember as being gently enjoyable.

The first few pages went on to feel a lot like 'China Court' and I was momentarily disappointed - much as I had liked I didn't want to read essentially the same book over again - and then it developed into something much better than I was expecting, though now I've checked Godden's bibliography I see that 'A Fugue In Time' precedes 'China Court' by some 16 years (I don't know why this has surprised me but it has).  'A Fugue In Time' is also, and I didn't expect this either, a response to T. S. Elliot's East Coker, specifically this passage: Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
                    The world becomes stranger, the pattern more
                        complicated
                    Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
                     Isolated, with no before and after,
                     But a lifetime burning in every moment
                     And not the lifetime of one man only
                     But of old stones that cannot be deciphered,
                     There is a time for the evening under starlight,
                     A time for the evening under lamplight
                     (The evening with the photograph album).
                     Love is most nearly itself
                     When here and now cease to matter.
                     Old men ought to be explorers
                     Here or there does not matter
                     We must be still and still moving
                     Into another intensity
                     For a further union, a deeper communion...
                     ...In my end is my beginning.

It is the story of a home and a family that have lived in it for 99 years. An elderly and disgraced General, Rolls Dane, has retired into his family home to live - I would say with the past but that's not quite right. The house doesn't forget the people who have made their lives in it. John Ironmonger Dane who took the lease and made a home for his young wife Griselda, Selina their daughter who takes over the housekeeping when Griselda dies giving birth to Rolls, Lark Ingoldsby whom John brings home as a young orphan and delivers into Selina's resentful care, there is Rolls/Rollo/Rolly, There is Grizel the young American niece who will also have her future in the house, and then there is Mr Proutie, and Mrs Proutie, and Mrs Crabbe, and all the others who have made the house what it is above and below stairs. All their stories are told, or at least parts of them are, and they're all told at the same time.

Each story belongs to the house as much as the furniture, the china, or the glassware - much of which is described in glorious lists of inventory - a home is made by the people that live in it, but it is also made of things, all the things which are loved and cherished and invested with memories.

This is an extraordinary book - thinking about it makes me think it shouldn't work, but it does, it really does. Godden does so many things with it, of which for me the most interesting is how she explores women's lives through their relationship with the house, and again to me the most interesting is Griselda. Married at 17 Griselda is a stuffed into the role of the angel in the home which really doesn't fit her very well. She's desperate for a life beyond the walls of her home but she's trapped by convention and love. There are plenty of ways to illustrate the plight of a respectable upper middle class Victorian housewife, Godden  does it by pointing out that Griselda doesn't have a key to her own front door. She has the interior keys, excepting the cellar key which is the property of master and butler, but she can't come and go from her own house as she pleases, not without being observed and not without tacit permission. The implications of that are still bothering me.  

Rumer Godden

Over the last couple of weeks I've acquired a pile of fantastic books - a mix of some good charity shop finds, review copies, moments of weakness in Waterstones, and a last ditch amazon order. There's a lot of great reading to look forward to but nothing I'm as excited by at the moment as these Virago reprints of Rumer Godden's novels.

Long before I knew about Godden as a writer 'Black Narcissus' was one of my favourite films, it's terrific if you haven't seen it, and one of those rare occasions when the film is as good as the book. Can you imagine the excitement of discovering it was a book too? Unfortunately not long after that happy moment Godden's books promptly fell out of print - but now they're back. My manky old second hand copies have gone back to the charity shop for somebody else to discover (they have a treat in store) and I have shiny lovely new books.

Virago very kindly sent me 'Black Narcissus', 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' and 'Kingfishers Catch Fire', the rest came from amazon because in a rare-these-days-fail none of my local Waterstones are stocking them which is disappointing because they're great books (and on a totally selfish level because it meant dealing with a courier and a bizarre argument about how many times said courier had called - he contended twice, but I hold that if you don't leave a note to say you called you can't expect to be contacted).