Page 63 - Phonebox Magazine December 2007

Book Review
By Oxfam Bookshop, Olney
The Last Resort by Alison Lurie
This is an immensely enjoyable book, Recently retired, Wilkie is feeling ill, and feeling his age. His sense of
displaying all Lurie’s usual wit and shrewd social observation. Her characters are not heroes and villains but people simply being themselves. The behaviour of some may belie their own estimation of themselves; others have redeeming features you don't at first suspect, all of them eventually give themselves away for the readers enjoyment.
The central character is Jenny, young wife of veteran environmentalist Wilkie Walker, who has made Wilkie her career.
She has organised his home, his correspondence, his media career and his social life; edited, illustrated and collaborated on his books – but sees herself merely as a support team for the great man's work.
his own importance wont let him contemplate a prolonged decline or a messy death. So, holidaying in Key West with Jenny, he is plotting a suicide which will look like a drowning accident – to protect his family (and, needless to say, his reputation).
Jenny is struggling to cope with Wilkie's increasingly strange behaviour but in Key West becomes involved with a range of people whose lives and shifting relationships begin to affect her own – the resident caretaker and his visiting family, the ageing-hippie poet renting a nearby apartment, and most importantly, feminist Lee Weiss with whom Jenny begins to develop a relationship that not only has nothing to do with Wilkie and his work, but is at odds with both.
Although the novel deals with the trials of old age and illness it also shows people trying to discover who they really are and finding that: “As you grow older and the future shrinks, you have only two choices: you can live in the fading past, or like children do, in the bright full present.” q
Review by Sandra Metcalf
And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison
Written in just 129 pages, this is a little gem of a book. Part unwavering. For this account is written
autobiography, part study in bereavement, part tribute to a much-loved father, it combines humour with a closely observed analysis of a Yorkshire family. The descriptions are vivid, the language evocative and well chosen; it is not surprising to discover that Blake Morrison is a published poet.
The author alternates memories of his childhood with a stark account of his father’s illness and subsequent death, but manages to do so without a trace of self-pity and with more than a little wry humour. He begins with what must have been an excruciatingly embarrassing incident, illustrating his father’s determination not to queue in a stationary line of vehicles waiting to enter the race circuit at Oulton Park, and subsequently being allowed into the more exclusive – and expensive – car park, by pleading ignorance and citing his profession as a doctor.
“This is the way it was with my father,” Morrison writes, “Minor duplicities. Little fiddles.” He later gives us his father’s favourite saying: “I may not be right, but I am never wrong,” and throughout the book there are instances of his father turning actual disaster into a pseudo- triumph, of making do in his many do-it-yourself enterprises, rather than spending money on new bits and pieces. However, throughout it all, the son’s affection and respect for his father is steady and
after his father’s death, when the father-son relationship is perceived for what it really was and given its true value.
The final chapter recounts an incident just a month before the father’s death, when he had driven down from Yorkshire to London, the car laden with plants for his son’s garden. As they walk around the house together, the father is desperate for odd jobs, ill though he undoubtedly is. And so it is that a loyal son allows his father to have the last word.
I loved this book; it is one of the few that I could not put down, and yet turned the last page with regret. It was a choice for the reading group, which was formed just over a year ago by volunteers and customers at the Oxfam bookshop. Joining a group is a good way of reading a wide variety of books, some of which would otherwise not be considered. Of all the selection we have had, this one is undoubtedly my favourite. q
Review by Thelma Shacklady
The books reviewed above were bought from Oxfam Books and Music, Olney, which sells donated books, records, CDs, tapes and music to raise money for Oxfam’s work in combating poverty around the world.
Film Review by neil stevens
The Assassination of Jesse James by
the Coward Robert Ford (15; Warner Bros) is a fantastically different western. Amazing and completely engrossing when once commanding outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt), meets Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), admiring, punkish 19-years old.
“Do you wanna be like me?” Jesse asks Robert. Thus unfolds an exceptional tale – from the novel by Ron Hansen, written for the screen and directed by New Zealand-born Andrew Dominick – shown in a series of vignettes involving the James’ gang and some family members, culminating in a Holy
Week slaying, giving thought to the Judas/ Jesus betrayal.
Gigantic faces in focus; surrounding scene and detail blurred emphasise real character. James’ still charismatic but disillusioned, eventually showing a mean streak spliced with unpredictability and psychosis.
Through it all actor Brad Pitt a surefooted incredible screen persona, wonderfully watchable. So too Casey Affleck – a certain to be star – here creepy, ingratiating, deceptively angelic-looking, intent on betrayal. But, in no way second best, supposedly the reason, rightly so, for the shared billing above the title. Hopefully both
will be included in forthcoming award nominations.
Film itself is sheer poetry in motion, long at close on three hours. As expected in 1880s West, there are several chilling blood-letting, blood-filled moments, and the occasional startling, shattering, penetrating gun shot!
Photographed by Robert Deakin in subdued brown, green, grey, sparkling white; brighter colours coming from waist-high yellow prairie grass; glowing candle, firelight, oil lamp and deathly, glinting gleam of a lethal pistol!
Superlative cloud formations, far distant immense skyscapes help give this one-off western memorable, haunting qualities. q
Phonebox Magazine 63
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