This is a bestselling 2022 comedic novel about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist working in the 1950s and 1960s, who also ends up presenting a television cookery programme called ‘Supper at Six’.

Early on, I came as close as I have in a long while to giving up on a book. Garmus manages to hit quite a few of my pet hates in novels full square.

The cast of characters includes Six-Thirty, a preternaturally intelligent dog who reflects on idioms, becomes irritated by another dog’s ‘smugness’, and even overhears a phone conversation and leads its owner to a wardrobe in response. This is a novel which, at heart, is about emotional truth; I find it hard to access that when I have to suspend disbelief so frequently. Having an omniscient narrator unrealistically imbue an animal with human-like emotions reduces the impact of that same omniscient narrator telling us about other characters’ emotional states.¹

Garmus also writes exceptionally clunky dialogue: this is the sort of novel where everyone speaks in complete sentences, which often also include a dose of narrative exposition. “Jesus, it’s as if you’re not familiar with TV’s tribal ways.”

Garmus also writes the plot in a way that elides time and effort, which is particularly curious when a theme of differential time and effort requirements for men and women is seeded throughout the book. Zott becomes an elite rower virtually overnight, and an accomplished television presenter in a matter of days.

But but but… I didn’t give up. Somehow, Garmus won me over, and I found myself enjoying this despite all of the above. The evocation of the treatment of women in science (and society) in the era was strong and insightful. The funny bits were frequently actually funny. The core messages were well-meant, if a little heavy-handed and preachy.

I’m not certain that I’d rush to read Garmus’s next novel, but I nevertheless enjoyed this more than I initially anticipated.

1. I know that this is all quite niche, that lots of people routinely anthropomorphise animals—and especially their pets—and I should just let it go… but I’m not describing my rational, conscious response, just my immediate emotional reaction. ↩

One of my pet peeves with any play (or book or film) is when I’m told within the text what I’m supposed to be feeling. There is nothing that does quite so much to telegraph a lack of confidence in the work than to tell the audience how to respond. I’m afraid The Boy with Two Hearts falls into exactly this trap.

This is a stage adaptation by Phil Porter of Hamed and Hassim Amiri’s memoir recounting their family’s harrowing journey from Afghanistan to the UK. The family was forced to flee Herat in 2000, after the Taliban ordered the killing of the matriarch for speaking out on women’s rights. Complicating matters, Hamed and Hassim’s brother Hussein has a serious congenital heart problem.

The play follows the parents and three young children as they cross Europe, trying to reach the UK for both family safety and NHS treatment for Hussein. I saw the play in my living room via National Theatre at Home, which is never quite the same experience as being in the same room as the performers.

The staging was admirably inventive, making use of projections to allow some dialogue to take place in Farsi with translations integrated into the scene. The show was scored throughout, with a singer (and co-composer) Elaha Soroor wandering around the set providing an elegiac backing of Afghan song.

The overall effect was moving, and it brought real human insight and compassion to the topic of asylum. It is well worth watching or going to see.

But I did have issues.

Firstly, a minor nitpicky staging issue which irritated me repeatedly. We are introduced at the start of the play to the fact that the family sits in a circle to eat and talk. Because they are on stage, they are not actually sat in a circle while they are talking about being sat in a circle, presumably because we wouldn’t see much and half the cast would have their backs to us. This is fair enough, except for the fact that they then call back repeatedly throughout the play—including in the very climax—to the circle. I don’t think it works to repeatedly call back to an image that the production never quite delivered.

Secondly, and I think this is a book-to-stage translation thing, there is a problematic lack of detail in some parts. I spent much of the first half wondering what the main character’s motivations were, partly because we are told nothing of their background.

Thirdly, the big one. Don’t tell me what to feel. This is a sad play. It is also a play that highlights stunning hypocrisy in the way we treat people and the way we collectively choose to view the world. We are only happy for the NHS to treat a severely sick kid once he’s completed a life-threatening journey across a continent: how can we be so cruel? And yet, the audience is directly addressed and told that this is not a sad play, and that it is actually a play about it being wonderful that everyone looks after each other.

Issues aside—I’d still recommend it.

The Boy with Two Hearts is streaming on National Theatre at Home until 14 December.

This exhibition of 150 abstract paintings from 81 overlooked female artists was exhilarating. As with surrealist art, abstract art is the sort of thing I would choose to have in my own home. I like the boldness, the depth, the way one’s interpretation shifts over time, the way you can’t quite pin it down. It is just totally my kind of thing.

As I was on my way to this exhibition, I happened upon an article about Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s design for 78 Derngate. This mentioned that Mackintosh’s designs and colour choices were dramatic to appeal to the client, who had limited colour vision. This made me wonder whether my limited colour vision is part of the reason that I enjoy big, bold, abstract art. Who knows.

I could, quite happily, have stayed all day at this exhibition, and still wanted to go back for more. I had so many favourites in that it’s hard to know which works to include in this post, but here are a few.

This is Distillation, a 1957 work by Gillian Ayres. Just look at it!

It’s apparently partly painted in household enamel and partly in oil paint. Ayres laid the canvas on the floor and poured, squirted, and brushed pain all over it, dissolving it with a solvent so that she could keep shifting it about.

Apparently, Jackson Pollock was an influence, but I care less about that than the fact I could get lost in it for days.

This is Myriader (myriads), painted in 1959 by Elna Fonnesbech-Sandberg. It’s such an intense piece. It immediately makes me think of those days—often busy work days—where it feels like my thoughts are going faster than I can keep up with them.¹ Interestingly, it was Fonnesbech-Sandberg’s psychoanalyst who encouraged her to express herself through painting, so maybe this is precisely what it represents.

These pieces are made by building up layers and layers of paint, then scratching some bits off and building them up again… which is a technique that chimes nicely with the sensation the work seems to represent.

This is Idyll II, a 1956 work by Miriam Schapiro. Schapiro based each of her works on those of old masters, recreated in her own style. I’m not sure what work this is based on, but I love how the figures come into and out of view. Sometimes, I see a small orchestra or band in this work, which is appropriate as there is something about the whole composition which seems musical to me.

This is La Nef (Interieur d’Eglise)—or ‘The Nave (Interior of a Church)—painted in 1955 by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. This was one of the smaller works in the show. I liked this less on an immediate ‘I want that on my wall’ level, and more on an intellectual level. The more I look at it, the more it clearly is a church, or the idea and feeling of a church, with regular almost arithmetical forms but cut across with things that don’t quite fit. And isn’t that also essentially religion?

And one more, just because it makes me go ‘wow.’ This is Mary Abbott’s 1959 work, Purple Crossover.

People who actually know something about art have written rave reviews of Action, Gesture, Paint. Given that an artistic idiot like me is also raving about it, it’s certain to get busy, so buy your tickets now. It continues at the Whitechapel Gallery until 7 May, after which—at least according to the chatty lady managing the cloakroom–it’s off to France and then Germany.

1. I know that this sounds slightly like the ravings of a lunatic, but it is a very distinct sensation that I sometimes have which I struggle to describe. I’ve descrbied it as ‘pressure of thought’ before, analagous to pressure of speech, but that’s not really quite right either. One of these days, I’ll come across a perfect description in some book or other: I’m sure the feeling isn’t at all unusual, I think it’s something everyone has, and I just don’t know the word for it. ↩

I like the quality snow lends to daylight. I’ve mentioned that before.

I like the unusual perspective snow brings, the way everything looks a little different.

I like that snow muffles the sounds of the city, though not this time because there isn’t enough of it.

I like walking in from the cold and slipping into a lovely swimming pool, and the invigorating contrast when I leave, but that’s really more to do with the temperature than the snow.

I like that the pool is always quiet when it snows, presumably because the weather puts people off.

I like the way that, contrary to British stereotypes, life goes on as normal when it snows.

I like that warm electric buses can ferry me to where I need to be despite the snow, without relying on burning fossil fuels.

I like that there isn’t much snow, and it will hopefully melt away quickly.

I dislike that some modern infrastructure, like these continuously activating toucan crossings, seem unable to cope with snow.

I dislike how cold my hands and feet get when it’s snowy, wet cold being more irritating than dry cold.

I dislike all the dirt when it snows, mostly from grid trodden inside on people’s shoes.

I dislike the way I can’t trust myself not to slip, especially on frozen snow.

I dislike the myriad tiny ways that my lack of confidence in walking in snow disrupts my life as someone who normally walks everywhere.

I dislike the feeling when a flurry of snow falls from a tree and onto my head, or worse, down the back of my neck.

I dislike forecasts suggesting that more snow is on the way.

This 2022 book was drawn to my attention by a review in the TLS, yet somehow still managed to get the wrong end of the stick regarding what it was about. I had expected something fairly anatomical, but as Vout says in her epilogue:

This book is less a biography of the Greek and Roman body, its birth, growth, death, afterlife (though there is a bit of that) than a scenography in nine acts that puts the human body into a series of performative contexts, contexts fuelled by fantasy as much as by scabby reality. And not just the bodies of the wealthy, healthy men that dominate elite texts, but female bodies, disadvantaged bodies, dead bodies. It is what has made visual and material culture so vocal, and replaced a narrative arc with a perspectival view that gives these bodies space to breathe.

I found this book to be a slightly odd combination of content about mythological stuff, like the bodies of the Greek gods, and real-world stuff, like the treatment of Roman slaves. I wonder if this combination comes naturally to Vout as a classics professor, and is only confounding to someone with absolutely no knowledge in the field, like me.

This meant that there were some bits of this book which I found very dull. I really couldn’t give two hoots about the sexual relations of mythical gods. But there were also riveting bits which gave me entirely new insights into life in Roman times. There were more of the latter than the former, and they have transformed my understanding of some historical trends.

For example, I had no idea that the early Christian church was fairly ambivalent about marriage, and that Roman society saw this as a threat. I had no idea that religious involvement in funerals is a relatively modern development. And I had no idea that the debates raging today about gender identity have some interesting parallels in Roman times.

Here are some quotations which I noted down:

Having a baby was a public duty, and one for which the women of Sparta were especially primed. Rather than sitting inside and spinning wool like their Athenian counterparts they were mandated by law to take as much exercise as the men, participating in running races and physical training so as to increase the chances of giving birth to vigorous offspring. Spartan husbands were ordered to spend only limited time with them, the implication being that this would increase the longing of both parties, and again, the strength of the children. These women were not just born to breed; they were breeding machines, honed like well-fed thoroughbreds to produce the kind of stock that would best serve a competitive culture.

Giving oral sex was considered particularly demeaning to the man, demanding as it did that he debase himself for his partner’s gratification. But women who performed fellatio were also condemned; the charge of having an impure mouth was the ultimate insult, whatever one’s gender, and the preserve of the prostitute.

For Plato, drugs were a last resort. Diet and exercise were where it was at: ‘no diseases which do not involve great danger ought to be irritated by drugs’. I think back to the neuralgia I experienced a few years ago and to my GP prescribing an anti-depressant that had ‘a helpful side effect’. And I am grateful to the friend who told me to throw the tablets in the bin and book my first yoga class.

Ask Antony or Timarchus whether they were homosexual or heterosexual and they would have struggled to understand the question. But this does not mean that the ancients were blind to the sex or gender of their bedfellows. In a world in which women were widely regarded as inferior to men, sleeping with them had to be different. Sleeping with slaves had to be different too, whether male or female, however masculine or feminine. Timarchus’s prosecutor is keen to acknowledge that relations between citizen males could, and should, be intimate and affirming, as indeed they were between Greek heroes, Achilles and Patroclus, who also slept with women. This is not the same as advocating intimacy over and above sex: there was nothing wrong with homosexual sex as long as citizens did not demean themselves in the process. It is about creating a space for love, and a love between men that could be as erotic as it was educative, more erotic in some ways than with a wife or prostitute. Sex with women was functional: in the case of Neaira, the brothel worker made wife, the jury (all male, of course) was being reminded that we have hetaerai for pleasure, concubines for the daily service of our bodies, and wives for the production of legitimate offspring and to have a reliable guardian of our household property’. In Greek discourse, if not also in practice, sex with another male was seen as more cerebral.

Christianity threatened the state by threatening the institution of marriage that had played such a central role in the story of Rome’s foundation. This was very much the line that Augustine pedalled when, in 401 CE, he wrote tracts on marriage and on holy virginity. A couple did not even have to be married, as long as they were faithful, prepared to put up with each other until one of them died, and relaxed about getting pregnant. Contraceptive methods were to be discouraged, but abstinence from sex was permissible, as long as both partners were happy with that, and as long, of course, as they were not getting their kicks elsewhere.

This wasn’t the book I was expecting it to be, but I enjoyed much of it nonetheless. I’m grateful to the London Library for lending me a copy to read.

It’s reputedly the UK’s best, and it was lovely to get out for a decent walk before the cold weather returns.

I can’t claim to have a deep or long-standing appreciation for the work of Irma Boom, but I think like most of us, I had a vague familiarity with the name and was aware that she was a designer. Having visited this exhibition, I’m much more familiar with her work designing books, and also her work in designing the visual identify of the Rijksmuseum following its 2013 refurbishment.¹

Having said that, I don’t think this exhibition was massively successful. Boom’s entire philosophy, as described in the exhibition, is that books can be turned into powerful works of art because they involve a necessary order and narrative. This is not well demonstrated by sticking the book in a glass case, where the viewer can see only one part of it.²

It also wasn’t massively clear where Boom’s exhibition started and ended. We were told that she had selected some works by others to theme with her own. However, Boom’s works were together in a corner of a gallery, and I’m not certain how much of the other stuff in the room was Boom’s doing, and how much was just permanent collection stuff.

For example, I was particularly taken with Han Schull’s untitled work pictured at the top of this post: a bit of aluminium spray-painted in a single colour and then duffed up, meaning that it looks like there are many colours (or shades) to it, even though in another sense there is only one. I can see the obvious connection between that and bookmaking… but did Boom see that connection, or has the Schull work lived long on that wall?

I was particularly intrigued by two of Boom’s books.

Her book for Chanel No5 which was ‘printed’ without ink was inspired. The texts and images are embossed rather than printed, meaning that the whole book remains plain white. This was a commentary by Boom on the way that the perfume, too, is experienced through senses besides the visual.

Her SHV Think Book was also striking, less for the object itself than for part of the story behind it. SHV had wanted the ‘book’ to be a permanent record, and so had considered creating a CD-ROM—the then-latest technology—rather than a book. Boom advised otherwise, suggesting that a book was likely to be a more timeless option than any modern digital format, and she won out. In retrospect, Boom was obviously correct: in 2023, a book is clearly much more accessible than a CD-ROM. This struck me because I’ve had this same conversation several times, especially with web developers. I once had to explain in terms that one of the major functions of something I was writing was for it to sit on a shelf alongside 100+ older versions—this wasn’t an optional extra.

Finally, there was a bit of what might reasonably be called surrealism to tickle my fancy. As part of Boom’s design work for the Rijksmuseum, she designed the object labels, one of which became an object in this exhibition as a result. And, as if that weren’t enough, from the ceiling hung a Benno Wissing and Jan Hoogervorst design for a directional sign to a toilet, as used in Schiphol Airport. There was no toilet in the indicated direction, of course, for this sign had been re-designated as art. Sublime.

Irma Boom: Art + Books continues at the Rijksmuseum until 7 May.

1. Including, as it happens, that expensive Vermeer catalogue I mentioned. ↩
2. It’s not long since I got frustrated at the same thing in the British Library exhibition of Alexander the Great, so forgive me if you think you’ve heard this rant before. ↩

Plenty of people (though not all) seem to be somewhere between angry and disappointed at the existence of Outernet London, a new venue next to Tottenham Court Road tube station that has live performance venues and stuff. Most of the opprobrium at what has been built—rather than what has been knocked down—seems to be a result of the wander-off-the-street area. I happened to be in the area so, well, wandered in off the street.

It’s basically a space with a huge advertising screen on the outside, and a series of hall-like interior spaces in which the walls and ceiling are covered with high-resolution screens. It’s been described as an “immersive experience” and “the world’s foremost bridge between the real world and the digital world”—which is basically marketing guff.

I was reminded most of the 360-degree cinemas at Epcot in the 1990s, except with the addition of images on the ceiling: the experience didn’t feel new or unique to me. There was an advert playing while I was there, but I can’t remember what company was footing the bill: I remember it was an office-space company, and I remember not being able to work out how the imagery connected with that, but I couldn’t tell you the brand. I suppose that also indicates my level of immersion.

But all of this is okay: I’m not the target audience, and their arrows flew right past me. I wouldn’t bother wandering in again, but then I’m not someone who’d go and see a 3D film at my local IMAX either, nor someone who’d pay more than passing attention to the screens at Piccadilly Circus.

I don’t think a room with screens on the walls is the end of good taste, I don’t think it’s an affront to civic decency, but I also don’t think it’s for me. And that’s fine.

This 2018 novel has a big following of fans, and I’ve been intending to read it since it was published. I was finally inspired to start reading after it appeared in a list of books enjoyed by readers of Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts, a novel which I enjoyed enormously.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is set in Manhattan in 2000. The narrator, a receptionist at an art gallery, decides that modern life it just too stressful, and that she’d benefit from a year of hibernation. The recent death of her wealthy parents means that she can survive on her inheritance.

She consults an entertainingly mad psychiatrist, Dr Tuttle, and pretends to be suffering from insomnia to build up a large supply of drugs to assist her hibernation. Her best friend, Reva, is a walking, talking, cheesy self-help book, whose own life is in chaos.

This novel is a satire of social privilege, ‘first world problems’, and capitalist psychiatry. I found it very funny, driven by zinging one-liners.

Daily meditation has been shown to cure insomnia in rats.

The characters are entirely unlikable and exhaustingly self-centred. Dr Tuttle provides light relief, but I think the novel would have benefited from some sort of moral compass or naive character to ground the insanity. I think Boy Parts was much better-balanced in that regard.

Moshfegh has decided to root the plot in a specific period: George W. Bush’s inauguration appears at one point, for example, and I’m not sure what this is intended to add. Perhaps it was intended to make us reflect on how simple those times seem in retrospect, and heighten the pathos of the narrator’s need to escape from the world—but it seems an odd period to choose, if so.

All things considered, while I enjoyed this book, I thought Boy Parts was a substantially more successful work. It dealt with broader and more pressing societal issues, it was more disturbing, it was funnier, and I felt I took more from it. But perhaps that’s in part because Moshfegh’s novel is American and Clark’s is British, and the local one resonated more with me.

Some other short quotes that I noted down:

Studied grace is not grace.

I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it.

My blind eye was the one real comfort I could give her.

My thanks to the Newcastle University library for lending me a copy of this book.

This collaborative exhibition by Neil Wilkin and Rachael Woodman, previously exhibited in Wales as ‘Cynhaeaf: Casglu Ffrwythau” was brilliant. I’ve never seen anything quite like these glass sculptures before, and their abstract, colourful nature is right up my street.

While each piece isn’t individually attributed, Wilkin’s usual thing is displaying organic forms through glasswork (the ‘fruits’) where Woodman’s is the collections of tubes (the ‘gatherings’). I was more aesthetically taken with the latter, though the former did strike me as being an especially challenging ‘one shot to get this right’ sort of art-form.

‘Harvest: Fruit Gathering’ continues at the National Glass Centre until 12 March.