Blurred at the edges

Don't mind me, just sneaking in at the back here. Yes, I know it's been nearly a year. Stuff, life, you know. Twitter, mostly. AAaaaaanyway. Excuse hiccups, Blogger changed while I was in my enchanted sleep and now I can't work out how to hyperlink.

Every now and then when I'm not writing about food, booze, or perfume, I write about books. There has been an almighty shriek about the infamous Fifty Shades Of Grey, and don't worry, I have no intention of dedicating a post to it, other people have covered the subject EXHAUSTIVELY. My whole Big Thing Point here is: I think what people are getting upset about at the moment is not anything to do with content, it's how it's presented. People like their genres to be crudely obvious and Fifty Shades confounds them because it's jacketed like "normal fiction" rather than being plastered with fingerwagging Parental Advisory stickers and the mark of the Beast and sold from under the counter. In point of fact it's doubly misleading because while it looks like fiction and is reputed to be terrifying civilisation-destroying porn, it is in fact a poorly-executed and soppy 1980s romance bonkbuster, pretending to be a bit transgressive with some handcuffs.

I just finished reading (and gruesomely enjoying) The Uninvited by Liz Jensen. She writes literary fiction, albeit odd and not entirely real-life, and gets reviewed in the heavyweight papers, Anthony Minghella was producing a film based on one of her books just before he died, etc etc. But if asked to classify what genre it belonged to, I would call it either Horror or Fantasy (caps because that's what we bookselly types do). Both of which are genres the average reader gets quite uneasy around. Ooh, Horror, that's all rats and gratuitous entrails, isn't it? Is Fantasy the one where it's all sodding elves and swords of mystic destiny? Publishers are obviously aware of the ghettoising of genres (I've mentioned this before), and nobody wants their book languishing in a section traditionally only visited by some but not all teenage boys, especially if it's been Orange Prize longlisted. Hence the recent trend towards blurring the boundaries. If you asked people what Susan Hill writes, they'd probably say Literary Fiction. And yet what's The Woman In Black? Well, Horror, obviously. It's even been filmed by the recently resuscitated Hammer. David Mitchell writes SciFi, because frankly Cloud Atlas is mostly that, and is being filmed by the Wachowski Brothers (that's The Matrix to you). So does Murakami. What it is, and this is all it is, is jacket design* and placement in shops. I'm personally all in favour of it, as anything that expands the boundaries of what people think is "literary" is a great thing. I would even be happy if there was a stretch the other way, so all bookshops had to have a tiny awful ghetto of a section called Novels About Middle-Class Women Having Nervous Breakdowns At Holland Park Dinner Parties.

*As an example, which of these would you buy? They're all the same text inside. What if you were told the appalling Regency Romance cover cost a fiver less than either, but in order to buy it you had to go to a separate section of the bookshop called Romance Novels?

More Guilty Pleasures

As promised! : Guilty Pleasures 2 - Son of Guilty Pleasures.

This one is a lot more difficult as, with film and TV, one man's guilty pleasure is another man's CULT VIEWING. These are the ones I genuinely feel slightly guilty about.

Film :

Ratatouille. God I love the rat. My secret kitchen alter ego.

Murder On The Orient Express. I spend far too much time perfecting my Wendy Hiller impersonation : "You will have the goodness to bring me.. the poached.. sole. With one small new.. poTAto. And a grrrreeen salad." And Sean Connery saying to Poirot "Can you give me your word - as a foreigner..." And, most importantly, the fact that even though Poirot works out who dunnit, he lets them off because JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED. I always get a lump in my throat at the end where they're all drinking champagne. "Her name was, I believe, a Miss FrrreeBody."

The Amazing Mr Blunden. Made in 1972 by the same crew and producers as The Railway Children, and with an amazingly similar look and feel: strangely 20-something girls playing 13-year-olds in Edwardian pinafores and tam-o-shanters. Great plot though - all about ghosts, redemption, etc... makes me cry every time. A great Bank Holiday film. Also stars Diana Dors as a gin-soaked old hag with a very stupid, very pretty, blonde daughter - slightly poignant as 20 years earlier she might have played the part herself.

TV:

Oh this is a hard one to admit to, but luckily there's just the one - My Super Sweet 16. I am so embarrassed by this that I may as well have a bag on my head as I type. I usually hate reality TV of all kinds, as while I thrive on schadenfreude I hate the fact that everybody looks a fool, a pompous twit or a bully, regardless of their intentions. I have friends who are TV editors, and I am starting to think they're probably possessed of some kind of evil genius; editing is key to how someone looks on TV. That and appropriate soundtrack (amazing what the Benny Hill theme can do to, say, a dignified solicitor or adoring parent).

The fundamental point of this programme is to show, in all its blingy horror and grotesque excess, the lengths the VERY RICH will go to to ensure that their (for the most part) unprepossessingly spoilt offspring have the best 16th birthday party of all their peers. Action is invariably as follows: scene in a vastly overpriced dress boutique (it's always a boutique, never just a shop) where daughter screams at her friends for wanting to wear the same dress. Instance of daughter shrieking "I HATE YOUUUUU" at whoever happens to be handy (parent, BFF, boyfriend). Plan for party to be Moulin Rouge themed, only to remember that cow Kelly had the same thing for hers. Sulk. New theme for party (LA Gangsta!!! Great, we can all dress in as little as possible and dance in a way that our parents will disapprove of!!!) proposed. Invitations ostentatiously only given to less pretty girls and every boy in school. Guest list lost by bouncers. Tantrum. Tantrum. High spirits, saucy dancing, embarrassingly obviously hired cast members from Hollyoaks to boost popularity rating. Boyfriend misbehaves. Tears in ladies' loo. Then the high point of the evening - DADDY'S BOUGHT ME A PORSCHE!!!!!!! Credits roll.

I'm so humiliated by admitting this that I need to lie down. Off to watch series 4 of "The Wire" now to remind myself that I do have taste really...

Gilding The Lily

If you love a book, NEVER NEVER go and see the film thereof (apart from "Hellboy", which was a class act). We've all been there - the extraordinary disappointment of seeing your favourite character played by Tom Cruise (or, worse, Val Kilmer, a man who looks like somebody drew a face on a balloon and then blew it up slightly too much), the dreadful soundtrack, the hamfisted casting, entire story arcs left out. I completely understand that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with altering a book to fit what some ponytailed suit thinks would be nice (and shoehorn some sex/car chases etc into a plot otherwise devoid of them), but in that case why say "Based on the novel by.." ?? Why not just totally rewrite it and call it something else - and in the process get the credit for a whole new and original plot? I only say this because I went to see "Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day" last night. Ho hum, I say to you, ho bleeding hum. And in fact quite the reverse argument applies to this one. Far from being a complex work gutted for the screen, the book was a frothy little nothing of a plot, a really good holiday read, and I have to say I could see it being a very sweet Sunday night feelgood kind of thing. So when I saw that it had Frances McDormand in it my heart sank slightly - not because I don't like her, because I really really do, but because she's decidedly not an insubstantial frothy kind of actress. And lo, lo and behold - suddenly the film was rife with foreboding, and I use the phrase advisedly (mostly because it sounds good); bomber planes flying overhead, air-raid drills, gasmasks in shop windows, characters saying sadly to each other "They don't remember the last war, do they..", all sorts of things that were never in the book - HELLOOO, I wanted to shout at the screen, the whole point of this book (written as it was in 1938) was to stop people thinking about the outbreak of war, and give them a frilly piece of frippery to take the nasty taste away. And as such, perfectly suited to our rather uncertain times, non?

I attach for your delectation a picture of Amy Adams, because she really was the only one who was perfectly cast and, bless her, she's another ginger. And Lee Pace, because when he appeared on screen we all cheered up immensely.