February 12, 2010 · 10:31 pm

it’s a crime

So I watch a little American Hot Rod. I can take it or leave it, I’m not dependent. Not as dependent as I am on Masterchef, anyway. The fact is I’m in love with Michel Roux. “Your spinach puree is coming to me with faint flavours of stripped oak floorboards, Michael. But otherwise quite nice. I would serve this food in my restaurant.” Reading: Ali Smith, Like. Re-reading: Rosamond Lehmann, The Echoing Grove. Looking forward to watching: No Country For Old Men. (I know, I know.) Still writing: Anna Kearney, as was.

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8 Responses to it’s a crime

  1. Three Coins
    February 13, 2010 at 7:15 am

    Ahh, ‘No Country for Old Men’. Now there’s a film to mull over.

  2. Rob Micallef
    February 13, 2010 at 5:59 pm

    Hi John,

    This comment actually does not go with your latest blog entry, but I do have a quick comment & question. One of my favorite books is Course of the Heart. I was just reading a review of Peter Straub’s Dark Matter…. Here’s my question, is it me or are their major borrowings from Course in Straub’s latest offering?

    Best,

    Robert

  3. Mark Reep
    February 14, 2010 at 4:34 pm

    I wondered for awhile if all the noise about ‘Old Country’ was just that. Then I saw it. Now it’s one of those movies like ‘The Godfather’- When you’re clicking around and it’s on, you sit down and watch again. Or at least, I do. This conversation between McCarthy and the Coen bothers was an interesting read: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673269,00.html

    AHR was never half as much fun after- Whoops, almost dropped a spoiler on you :)

  4. uzwi
    February 14, 2010 at 5:08 pm

    Thanx for that, Mark–luckily I’d watched it in the meantime. Very fine, & I can see how you might develop a relationship with it.
    @ Robert: I haven’t read that novel of Peter’s, so I can’t comment.

  5. Mike A
    February 15, 2010 at 11:25 am

    I enjoyed the “Echoing Grove”, but preferred “The Weather in the Streets”.

  6. uzwi
    February 15, 2010 at 3:11 pm

    Hi Mike A. I like all her novels–for me the intense ones are Dusty Answer & The Echoing Grove–but if you said to me, ok you can take one Rosamond Lehmann volume with you when you go, it wouldn’t be a novel, it would be the short stories, The Gypsy’s Baby. I think I’m keen on The Echoing Grove because that opening section is a perfect short story in itself.

    Has anyone seen the film, The Heart of Me(2002), based on The Echoing Grove ? I ask because I haven’t.

  7. Mike A
    February 15, 2010 at 6:02 pm

    I’ve seen the film, or at least the second half of it, which I caught on TV – in fact, I saw it before I read the book. It was OK, but came across as a fairly standard “tragic love-triangle” movie. I think what is best about Lehmann doesn’t translate easily to film – language, atmosphere, interior states.

    I haven’t read “Dusty Answer” or Lehmann’s short stories – a situation I must remedy. The only other of hers I’ve read is “Invitation to the Waltz”, which I also enjoyed, though it’s a much “lighter” novel than its sequel.

  8. uzwi
    February 15, 2010 at 6:41 pm

    >>I think what is best about Lehmann doesn’t translate easily to film – language, atmosphere, interior states.

    Even truer of the short stories, so you are in for a treat. She was as good as Bowen & Taylor at those tiny shifts of emotion which cause change in people’s lives. (What would be the word for your emotional sensorium ? Whatever it is, Lehmann’s was tuned.)