#fridayreads

I haven't been reading so much this month. I thought it was because I was so busy reading for uni, but the truth is, none of the books I've started managed to assert itself as a priority. They're all good, interesting books, but sometimes you need a particular kind of story and you have to look for it.

My quest to find this right kind of story ended yesterday when I finally got my student library card. This is how it happened: I was going to get "The Dispossessed", by Ursula K. Le Guin, but there were no copies of it. I was about to walk out when I remembered I really wanted to read "Fifth Business", ever since watching the wonderfully articulate and brilliant people at hellohemlock discuss it. I mentioned to the librarian that it might be found as a bind up, as it was part of a series. So, when she couldn't find it, she came back with this (the book pictured above) instead. All that's left to say is I'll be forever grateful to her, for I've read a little of "What's Bred in the Bone" yesterday, and I've never been quite so impressed with a book before, without having finished it first.

Unfortunately, I have no really clever thing to say about it. It's not that kind of book. It's clever in itself, and all I can do is remark upon it and write down the things that on this, my first reading, have struck me as particularly brilliant. Mind you, this is a post in progress. I am currently on page 85 and it is a testament to the book's awesomeness that I am already eager to discuss it's contents.

"What's Bred in the Bone" is, as the title hints, the story of Francis Cornish's life. But it's no ordinary account of it, just as Francis Cornish is not your everyday person born to a rich family. 

The story starts with the sole three members of the Cornish Foundation for Promotion of the Arts and Humane Scholarship. They are unlikely choices for the position they occupy, yet have to make do and solve the matter of Uncle Frank's biography. To this extent, two of the members, husband and wife, are trying to reconcile Simon Darcourt, "the disappointed biographer" (as the cover flap will describe him), to the fact that, although little is known of Frank Cornish's life, and the little that is known must be, by all means, kept from the public's eye, the book has to be written and Darcourt is the person to do it. 

Gradually, their conversation turns to fanciful speculations on the existence of Recording Angels and Daimons. And, sure enough, summoned by the sound of their names, The Lesser Zadkiel and the Daimon Maimas drop in and start to reminisce themselves about the life of our mysterious man. This is the point where the story might be said to really begin. What's clever though, is that we already have a vague idea of the sort of person Francis Cornish turned out to be. So what is about to come promises to shed light on the matters discussed by the three. What's even more clever is that you seem to experience the unfolding of the story alongside the two supernatural creatures, and just as you might be wondering why you need to know about Blairlogie or the politics of the time, you sigh with relief at Maimas' interruption: "When are we going to get to my man?".

This is all I'm about to say of the plot. Now, for the things I've most enjoyed:

* Davies gives childhood a fair amount of importance. In an interview he says that he considers it to be a formative period in someone's life and talks about how his family moving from place to place gave him "a sort of ruthlesness and a watchful quality". In the book, Darcourt is possessed by the idea of unveiling Francis' past, of creating the connections that might explain his character: 

"Childhood! That's the key. Not the only key, but the first key to the mystery of a human creature. Who brought him up, and what were they and what did they believe that stamped the child so that those beliefs stuck in his mind long after he thought he had rejected them?"

Later, it is said:

"But beneath what the mind chooses to admit to itself lie convictions that shape our lives."

 * "The trouble was that they felt so powerfully it utterly overset them and brought them sometimes near to panic. A Celtic temperament; a difficult heritage. Often they made terrible mistakes when an intelligent approach to feeling was called for. You know what happened? In later life the Senator became something of a philosopher, which is a great escape from feeling, and Mary-Jim acquired the trick of banishing of trivializing anything that was troublesome."

I love this paragraph. It goes on to say that Francis became neither a philosopher, nor a trivializer, but faced his troubles head-on. I think it conveys that that is the way to go in life, facing what upsets you most. And it made me realise that most of the time I am, indeed, the trivializer. How many times have you wrote about something that bothered you, that made you suffer, on Tumblr, phrasing it in such a way as to get laughs? How many times have you dismissed an issue because you were unsure of your ability to solve it, so you decided it could wait, or it wasn't important enough? 

* The definition given for Daimons made me think of all the instances where it appears I've had one myself: "manifestations of the artistic conscience, who supply you with extra energy when it is needed, and tip you off when things aren't going as they should". Also, Maimas is awful fun: 

"They said, don't show off, and I tried my best not to show off. That family needed an influence like me.

- You found them dull?

- My dear Zadkiel, we haven't even touched on Blairlogie. There was dullness for you! But it's been my experience, over several aeons, that a good dull beginning does no harm to an interesting life."