Remember to share your views on the book via this blog, we look forward to reading your comments.
For more info click on the links below
http://www.redplenty.com/Front_page.html
http://www.faber.co.uk/work/red-plenty/9780571225231/
Saturday, 13 August 2011
Red Plenty - August 2011
Remember to share your views on the book via this blog, we look forward to reading your comments.
For more info click on the links below
http://www.redplenty.com/Front_page.html
http://www.faber.co.uk/work/red-plenty/9780571225231/
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Think I might have to delay starting this one - having listened to Anne Cleeves talk about her books, I've now got a couple of them out at the moment and feel I ought to finish them first.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, confession time. I'm not a great fan of Francis Spufford. Nevertheless, I promise to give this book my best shot.
ReplyDeleteArticle published in The Guardian when the book was published in Hardback
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/07/red-plenty-francis-spufford-ussr
Well this is certainly not the type of book I'd have chosen for myself. I like my relaxing reads to be fiction, for one thing. And Soviet Russia doesn't excite me one bit. Will be interesting to see how I get on!
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't have been a title I'd have chosen for myself. I did quite enjoy it though. Being old enough to have some awareness of at least 60's Russia may have helped. I'm not one for studying history so the use of partly fictional characters to tell the story of what was going on then helped. I have to confess to not reading any of the additional notes at the end, and I may have missed any kind of conclusion the book came to as it just seemed to end rather suddenly.
ReplyDeleteI'm a few chapters in to the book and surviving! The style suits me - different characters allow us to see different aspects of communism. Just came across an interesting article on the BBC news site about how Marx was right about capitalism - ties in beautifully with Red Plenty.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14764357
wow!; this style certainly suits me!; all those reader-friendly added extras of info to dot in and out of are right up my interactive street:
ReplyDelete- cast list (hooray!!);
- introductions to each section;
- terrifyingly impressive bibliography ;
- almost 60 pages of fascinating notes;
- intelligent use of italic and bold ;
AND he makes dear bumbley mr khrushchev so cuddly, doesnt he?
stewart, can i keep this one and sleep with it under my pillow?; hope so, as any minute now i am going to take my stanley knife to it and split it up into 2 or 3 slimmer, less likely to spring shut all the time because this paperback is so tightly bound, sections...
I agree al! I love the cast list and extra notes - so easy to check who's who. (If only more writers would do this...)
ReplyDeleteI usually don't go for history either, but had enjoyed his 'child who books made' (forgotten the exact title!) so was willing to give it a go - and enjoyed it very much. I found giving voices and stories to individuals was very helpful for me, and felt I was learning a lot about the economic and political systems of that era. That said I always enjoy contemporary literature more than historical as it feels more authentic - eg Love of worker bees.... but still, a good choice.
ReplyDeleteWell I gave this book a good try but its just not me at the moment. Reading is a form of escapism for me and I found this book and subject neither interesting or entertaining. Very well written and with excellent historical perception, a good read if you like modern history, which I don't.. I do read a lot of non-fiction and it is good that we are starting to be tempted by them through 'At Home'. I look forward to the next one...I have really enjoyed all the chosen titles so far...Well done Faber and Orkney Library
ReplyDeletefor anyone who is finding the start rather hard going, try flipping to parts 4 and 5 for highly entertaining ironic commentaries ( but allow for tears behind the laughter...)
ReplyDeletethe style and layout MADE me actively cross-check and double-check people , places and actions where otherwise i would have lazily trundled on and hoped for eventual passive understanding ( as i usually did while living through all those politically highly dangerous times); fiction or fact hardly matters - especially when the facts were so often far less credible than spufford's clever fictions!
as i put the book down (for later re-reads if time) i found myself reacting to all our today's meedja news ( local, national and international) in a much more cynical, less trusting, more cautious manner: no more letters to assorted editors for a while now; keep head well down and cultivate garden...
PS thanks stewart for the ref - it turned up a very useful commentary by Stephen Rose , but also a turgidly lengthy printed lecture from somebody else whose name escapes me;
ReplyDeleteand it reminded me that, as a scientist, i appreciated the realistic presentations of scientific settings, individuals and theories - even though i stumbled a bit over the clever comic book genetics...
Finished Red Plenty today. I don't honestly know what to say about it. if asked if I enjoyed it, I'd reply I didn't hate it. At no point did I feel like giving up. It's an interesting mix of fiction and non-fiction, and I have certainly learned more about communism. (And now have a much better understanding of how cancer develops - that's probably the thing that will stay with me.)
ReplyDeleteWould I recommend it to others? Probably not, unless I knew they were into Russian History.
final PS: the only time i really doubted whether the settings were reasonably accurate was in the uproar of the ultimate hospital labour ward: could it be that eastern european women have narrower, less child-birth-friendly pelvises than we fortunate western european women?; or is it maybe more to do with stiff upper lips than narrow pelvises?
ReplyDeletea really truly final posting: i'm now into spufford's earlier 'backroom boys'; a similar structure of 6 snapshots over time, in this case based almost entirely on factual accounts of british participation in modern engineering feats from black knight rocket via computer games up to mars landing;
ReplyDeletespufford is a brilliantly original polymath of a man, who modestly explains his work : ' i have chosen 6 incidents, 6 scenes from a much larger drama.....they tell the story of how britain stopped being an industrial society and turned into something else'.
this may all sound dire to many not overly intuitively inclined towards nuts, bolts and electrons, but give it a try - and your everyday world of his 'something else' might never seem quite the same again!
What a treat! A delight from start to finish. Some beautiful writing and great description - particularly loved the sections on the internal workings of the computer and the human body :-)
ReplyDeleteNot a book that I would have been drawn to pick up if left to my own devices, so thank you for this introduction to F Spufford - cannot wait to read more.
I tried. I really tried, but once again I had to admit defeat. Each time I attempt to read a book by Francis Spufford I brace myself and think “this one will be ok; this time I’ll get through it”, but it’s no use. I’ve read many positive reviews of his work, including a few right here on this blog, so I guess it’s simply that Spufford’s writing style is an acquired taste. It’s just not mine. I could say more about it, but it would all be rather negative which wouldn’t be fair on those who enjoyed Red Plenty. I have no wish to spoil anyone’s reading pleasure.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my sincere thanks to Faber and Faber and to Orkney Library & Archive for giving me the opportunity to give this author’s work another try. There was always the chance that this book might have been different. Sadly it wasn't to be.
I got this book a bit late and was looking forward to reading something new. Well all I can say is I tried, and tried and tried, and despite picking it up any time I had a chance I just could not get into it. Normally I DO try to stick with books, even if they are a bit of a chore, however currently have given up on this one, about less than 1/3rd of the way in. Keeping it on the bookshelf as I hope to try again some other time (I do have varied tastes and perhaps this was just not the time for me to read it?), though really not sure if I will ever read it right through.
ReplyDelete