Simply Social

Simply Social chose ‘What was Lost’ by Catherine O’Flynn as their July book.

A tender and sharply observant debut novel about a missing young girl—winner of the Costa First Novel Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and The Guardian First Book Award

In the 1980s, Kate Meaney—“Top Secret” notebook and toy monkey in tow—is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing “suspects” and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press.

Then, in 2003, Adrian’s sister Lisa—stuck in a dead-end relationship—is working as a manager at Your Music, a discount record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the outrageous behaviour of her customers and colleagues. But along with a security guard, Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl glimpsed on the mall’s surveillance cameras. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, Lisa and Kurt investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself. Written with warmth and wit, What Was Lost is a haunting debut from an incredible new talent.

The novel, set in Birmingham in the mid-eighties, traces the story of a young girl called Kate. Kate aspires to be a great detective, spending days on stake-out at her local shopping centre. The narrative then jumps 20 years, when the ghost of a little girl starts appearing in service corridors. The author’s offers an astute observation on consumerism, similarities of which I am sure are played out in shopping centre’s up and down the country and go to make this far more than a generic mystery and the icing on the cake is a twist in the tail which I really didn’t see coming.

A good read.

Did you know that Cambridge used to be a port?  Well this was one of many new things that we learnt on a Simply Social guided walking tour of the Riverside and Castle Hill are of the town.  Our blue badge guide explained how, at one time, the river Cam provided a crucial physical link with other parts of East Anglia and with the continent of Europe.  Cambridge became an important distribution centre.  The old Roman road that runs through the town also played a considerable role in shaping Cambridge as a trading centre.  The siting of the Cam Bridge (now Magdalene Bridge) was also crucial to the development of the town, and the need to protect this river crossing resulted in the erection of a fort overlooking the bridge.  Thus for both geographic and strategic reasons Cambridge became a convenient stopping place for travellers and merchants.

As early as 43AD the Romans built a fortified camp at Castle Hill, and in 300AD they laid out a new Roman town.  They also built a system of canals that linked Cambridge with other Roman settlements in the fens.  However, it was the Danes who really put Cambridge on the trading map when they arrived in 800AD.  Interlinking waterways that connected with the River Cam offered river travel as far as King’s Lynn and the Wash. 

Cambridge continued to expand throughout the 12th century.  Without the dominance of the University, the river front was made up of barns, warehouses and private accommodation.  We will find out more about how Cambridge developed on our next tour in June.

We went to see Leatherheads at Cineworld .Leatherheads" is a movie of laughs, and feel good fun a period piece of football nostalgia that’s held together by it’s slapstick comedy and blended well with romance. George Clooney who stars and directs gives a good turn here, yet it seems a little uncommon seeing the superstar in a period comedy piece as he’s clearly a better dramatic actor still he scores some points here for his style of shooting and direction of the film.
Set in the 1920’s George is ‘Dodge’ Connelly a football player on the field and a ladies man off it, and this is before the big money and rules changes that took into form for the game. Clooney’s team the Duluth Bulldogs are a scrapper bunch at play yet the team is tough and gritty, and off the field George’s Dodge character is full of drink and has eyes for a dame. Enter Lexie Littleton(Renee Zellweger)who’s an elegant and sexy snap news lady of a reporter as she’s a little lady in red from her nifty wardrobe. While the Bulldogs team and other foes have gone bankrupt and many move on to other traits of work like mining and labor, a plan then develops to invest in and start an organized league with the help of a famous recruit for the Bulldogs that being college ivy league stud and apparent war hero Carter Rutherford(John Krasinski). Along the way then the film blends with plenty of slapstick laughs and comic gridiron action from strange and crazy tackles to muddy fields to catchy flirtation one liners and romance that is seen in a chastely and sexy way. And the big surprise is the truth about the apparent battlefield story is revealed.
Overall this isn’t a great movie, but it’s OK as the slapstick and laughs carry it, so if your expecting a historical serious and dramatic look at the early NFL you want get it here. Though the costumes and uniforms of the classic throwback way of no face mask, no chin gear, nor any rules make you feel just like your back watching a 1920’s era game. The chemistry between Clooney and Zellweger is good as Renee is a bright treat to watch even though the laughs are good and the scenes are fun Clooney appears out of place here in a comedy work even though his performance is good, this screwball comedy scores for laughs and is flagged for drama and it’s lack of focused attention on the history of the start of the NFL.

The People’s Act of Love
by James Meek

This powerful novel takes place in 1919 in Yasyk, a little town on the edge of the vast Siberian hinterland where some Czech soldiers are left marooned by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire and a secretive, utopian community of voluntary eunuchs, called skoptsy, are living. We also learn about the practice of taking a naive companion along on Siberian journeys with the intention of eating him.

The story starts in two places. First, in a university town in 1910, where two students, boy and girl, embrace the revolution and one another. He is unable to prevent her from attempting to throw a bomb; she is caught, and exiled to Siberia.

The main story begins nine years later in Yasyk. The quartet at the centre of the story consists of an attractive woman, her ex-husband who has become a skoptsy, and her two lovers, a Czech soldier of Jewish extraction and the erstwhile boy student, a recent arrival who has just emerged from Siberia.

Characters tell their stories to one another; or their stories are told, in long, leisurely loops. By means of these interlocking, densely textured, convincing fables, Meek locates common ground between skoptsy, revolutionaries, and cannibals as responses to the appalling inequities of Tsarist Russia.

An essential key is given to the reader in the first pages, where the students recite words they know by heart: ‘The nature of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, any sentimentality, rapture or enthusiasm … he is not a revolutionary if he feels pity for anything in this world.’ Thus, he - or she - is required to dehumanise. Similarly, though on quite different grounds, the skoptsy, in identifying lust as the root of all evil, attempt to divest themselves of humanity along with their genitals in order to become ‘like angels’. Anna is human and inconsistent; she changes her mind about lovers, worries about her son. But both her husband and the student Samarin, in their separate ways, select a single version of their personality and stick to it, at a cost which the novel questions.

Another question which the narrative poses is about the relation between sexual feeling and human feeling. In a wholly logical denouement, the revolutionary Samarin ends up begging a skoptsy to castrate him in order that his service to the revolution should no longer be undermined by irrational affection.

Notes taken from a review in The Observer.

Although this was not an easy read it was worth the effort and on reaching the conclusion there is more clarity and understanding of both the story and Meek’s skill in allowing it to unfold in a seemingly fragmented way.

We had another interesting tour of the Fitzwilliam Museum last week when we looked at Early Renaissance Painting: 1250–1450

In the late-thirteenth century, the highly patterned and stylised form of painting that dominated the Middle Ages began to give way to a much more naturalistic kind of art.
The way art looked changed dramatically and this film questions why it happened at this particular point and how artists learned to paint with completely new approaches.

What were the main characteristics of early Renaissance paintings? There are a number of characteristics attributed to Early Renaissance paintings, the most common-place and obvious of these being their subject matter. In all early Renaissance painting, religious events or icons or Greek and Roman myths play a large role. This was because it was not until the mid-renaissance that anyone other than the church was rich enough to commission paintings. Both symbols and real-life events were represented together in the same works.

Oil paint was used for the first time. Prior to this point, egg tempera was the medium of choice. Naturalism is another important characteristic. It portrays a realistic observation of the natural world e.g. peoples faces express real emotions (contrary to idealism which portrays an ‘ideal’ observation of the natural world).