Read another two collections by Ruth Padel recently - Rembrandt Would Have Loved You and Fusewire. Rembrant was a lovely read. It was obviously an earlier collection and Padel's sensual style was a bit less developed but I still absolutely loved it, the love poems and use of the kind of scene you see in paintings by the Dutch Masters as an image was absolutely lovely. Fusewire is even earlier, and very politically-focused, particularly on conflict between Britain and Ireland. For this reason I didn't identify with it so much - I'm young enough that I haven't even been taught about the Troubles in school, let alone remember them - although I loved one poem in particular, 'Desire Paths of Sarajevo', which juxtaposes scenes of genocide and suffering with the comfort of love and the tenderness/violence of sex.
I recently bought Pascale Petit's 'The Treekeeper's Tale' and Carol Rumens' 'De Chirico's Threads' (I love De Chirico, the half-cartoon, half-sci-fi, surrealist style of his and the beautiful scenes of Hector and Andromache) and even though I am dying to tear into them I am holding off so that I finish Louis de Bernieres' Birds Without Wings, which I am absolutely adoring (any book that is compellingly readable but still contains the words 'mommixity' and 'foofaraw' is OK by me). L'Etranger is lying in a corner gathering dust. I am trying to forget to feel guilty about this.
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