ROSEMARY MAC CABE

There’s something about literature set in India that repels me – it may have been White Tiger what broke the camel’s back – and something else that attracts me in equal measure to Chinese literature. Maybe it’s because I quite enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha, it being the closest my young and put-upon self would get to high literary smut, and before Christmas I read The Good Women of China, which I would recommend to anyone as a way of understanding the position of women in many patriarchal societies, albeit in an exaggerated form of post-revolution China.

I still don’t quite understand Chinese politics, although I doubt there are many who do, without having spent years studying it. Hong Ying’s story is not a political one but, like many Chinese memoirs, it is littered with political history and cultural norms that tie in closely with the regime of  the time. From famine to revolution, from Chongqing to Tiananmen Square, Ying’s autobiography is as political, as geographical as it is personal – and it is personal.

Hers is a story of love or lack thereof, of not fitting into a family, a society, where fitting in was essential – of growing up in an atmosphere of secrecy and staunch privacy, at the expense of self expression and understanding. It is also an illuminating story about identity, about realising and holding onto a sense of self when you can’t even know your own past, or your own history. It is a heartbreaking story of growing up with neither love nor affection, but only an inexplicable fear of abandonment and of discovering a history more terrifying than a loveless family.

The story itself is fragmented, but it becomes the norm and, in fact, more natural than a chronological recollection – memory itself is fragmented, and our lives don’t flash in front of our eyes in order, from birth to death. Rather, they come in fits and starts, one thing reminding us of another, and Ying does an excellent job of maintaining order in a chaotic series of memories.

I would love if my 2010 book reviews could be an example of my highly intellectual brain and fully-formed analytical capabilities, but unfortunately there are times when a gal has a short flight to take, and those times call for something that I otherwise turn my nose up at: chick-lit. And so here we are, Lauren Conrad’s La Candy in hand (countered by a piece of Chinese literature that will be reviewed soon), shuffling up to the counter at Hughes & Hughes in Dublin Airport and crossing my fingers that nobody will see me. (My legions of adoring fans would be so let down, you know.)

For those of you not familiar with Conrad, she is the former “star” of MTV’s reality hit, The Hills, having moved on from Laguna Beach to live in LA with her best friend Heidi, who is now SO not her BFF, making loads of fake friends along the way. La Candy is the story of Jane, a pretty, girl-next-door type whose life is turned upside down when she is approached by a TV producer who wants to make her a star by filming a reality show based around her, her gorgeous best friend Scarlett (I think; it’s always a sign of a terrible book when you forget names and details straight away) and two other girls who are inserted to be their fake friends. So far, so clear.

The pros? It’s short. The writing is huge. It’s kind of like watching an episode of Gossip Girl, but without Chuck Bass or the amazing fashion so, really, it’s quite rubbish.

The cons? It’s quite rubbish. You’ll spend a lot of time wondering which one’s Heidi, which one’s Audrina, thinking about the myriad thinly-veiled references to real-life occurrences. Plus, it’s really embarrassing to be caught reading it by, say, a work colleague.

I generally dislike seeing the film before reading the book, but in the case of The Road, it was a case of too much, too soon – or something. When I saw The Road, and some of you may already have read this, I had no idea what it was about. So when I read the book, I was that little bit better prepared than I had been on the cold, snowy morning I found myself in the Denzille Lane Cinema.

There’s no doubt that Cormac McCarthy is a great writer, grammatical nuance aside. (In the post-apocalyptic vision of the future McCarthy has presented, the word “don’t” has lost its apostrophe; Spanish is written with a lower-case “s”, as if to say that tradition, or even language, has no place in this devastated vista.) And The Road is one of those rare books, pared down to its essential elements, that manages to tug at the heartstrings just as effectively – if not moreso – as one of John Banville’s works of tongue-twisting prose.

There is no plot background, little character development, no meandering asides to distract from the essential story – which is, “the world has ended; some people survive and no one knows who are the good guys and who the bad, but love will shine a (dim, barely visible) light”. The Road is horrific; it is heartbreaking, it is tortuous, each repellent scene is worse than the last, and better than the next.

If you’re looking for hope, McCarthy has none to give. I’m sure there’s a lesson in The Road, but I refuse to kowtow to these shockingly obvious references to environmental and ecological matters. Instead, the lessons I gleaned are thus: keep a tank of petrol in the garage, stockpile canned goods, get a gun and an arsenal of bullets, and don’t have children unless they’re for eating. The future sure is golden, ladies and gents.

Q. “I used to be so “Pink” and healthy looking on my inside Labia Lip area.  Now I am losing that fresh look. Is there anything I can do”?

A. Yes, now there is a solution! “My New Pink Button” is a Cosmetic Dye especially for the woman’s genital area, to help restore that healthy vibrant Rosy color.  Until now there has never been a solution for restoring natural pigment.  This is a concern with many women and more than you can even imagine, and a frequent question that Physicians are asked.  Check out the blogs on the Internet.  You are not alone! This is a common problem and we now have a simple and safe solution, restoring sexual confidence to Women everywhere!

Aside from the fact that I love when people capitalise random words – “Rosy”, “Labia”, “Lip” and “Women” – this is, if you’ll excuse my language, the most fucked up thing I’ve seen in a while. My new pink button. Because my old pink button isn’t quite pink enough any more. Who the hell has time, between tweeting, emailing, blogging and calling, to worry about their “button” losing its “Rosy color”? Well, obviously “more [women] than you can even imagine”. I have no [more] words.

I was sick and tired of everything. . . sometimes you listen to a song, over and over, for a week, or two, or three, and it makes you feel everything that you’re already feeling, but more – amplified.

Sometimes I dream about meeting a person who could do that, but then I imagine it might be like that episode of Fringe where the guy made everyone feel how he was feeling and they all tried to kill themselves because he was so fucking depressed.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if I left, if I went and did what people keep telling me I should do, and I realise that it would be the same, but in a different vista. Because the common denominator is me, and I’m always going to have to be inside my head, ain’t I?

Sometimes that really gets me down, and other times I don’t really give a crap. Because I’d rather be in my head than in Amanda Knox’s, or in a lot of people’s – people who can spell but don’t bother; people who LOL a lot; people who have a collective conscience instead of an individual one; people who cough during the theatre.

Sometimes I think I laugh too loudly in the cinema. The rest of the time I don’t care, because it embarrasses the person I’m with (99% of the time), and that’s kind of enough to make me keep laughing.

Sometimes I write “poetic” prose, and a certain member of my family (ahem) without fail, will send me an email giving out about it. “Did you read that?” No, I didn’t. I don’t like to re-read, but I like to write. So I’ll anticipate your email. I can’t wait.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the acronym. Even as a child, it struck me as a lazy way of avoiding that extra syllable or two. Given my family’s penchant for post-dinner games, the word “syllable” has been as firmly engrained in my psyche as the words “Mum” and “Dad”.

“No, Rosemary, that’s two syllables – count them out.” Really, I could barely tie my own shoelaces. But I digress.

Fashion magazines have always been big fans of the acronym, or the word-shortening. The LBD is the most obvious (”little black dress” of which, according to Vogue, one can never have too many), but in recent times we’ve lost the run of ourselves altogether. The denim legging is the “jegging” (jean legging; something I refused to adopt, both in semantics and in my sartorial reality, until I realised that denim leggings are to plus-sized women what granny pants are to Bridget Jones), the shoe boot is the shoot, although I much prefer the bootie myself.

It just smacks of an incredible laziness, to be perfectly honest. Or else of succinctness, something else of which I’m not a fan, although I am learning to appreciate its more subtle nuances, having got involved, this week, in an email conversation with someone whose idea of an email conversation is two lines, and very little punctuation. I can only imagine what the suggestion of an emoticon would do to his sensibilities.

Why use 10 words when you can use three small letters? Because words have been invented to facilitate an ease of leaving, not to complicate an otherwise already complicated world. And letters are for sissies, and the army, two groups who are not as far removed from one another as you might initially suspect.

What’s my point? Don’t LOL at me when a “ha” will do. Don’t say things in all honesty (TBH). AFAIK may make sense, but by leaving it out you are therefore implying it; if you tell me something, it is always as far as you know, is it not? As for IMO, ditto. IMO (AFAIK), he who TBHs first, has the last LOL.

That has to be the classiest line in any song, ever. Now I confess: I love this song. I may be losing my mind. I just did something totally crazy, and I’m feeling slightly unhinged. Not that crazy, like. Nobody’s dead. You’ll hear all about it over on Twitter. Go there, hang around, make some friends, and so on. But before you do, turn up the volume, pretend you’re 16 and in CP’s in Galway and just soak it up. . .

via xkcd

Dennis Lehane wrote Shutter Island in 2003; in 2010, it will be released as a “feature film” (I love when websites say that; it sounds so oddly 1920s) starring Leonardo diCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese.

The book is a hauntingly compelling piece of writing; part crime novel, part psychological thriller, part love story. . . it really does have a hell of a lot of parts. Lehane sculpts his characters with a meticulous determination, allowing you, the reader, to keep step with them but denying you the ability to get any more than a half step ahead. That’s the beauty of Shutter Island – it keeps you guessing, but your guessing is never really correct. I had gone through about 10 theories in my brain, running through possible endings until I [thought I had] exhausted every possibility, and then Lehane’s final coup came to hit me straight between the eyes, from an angle I couldn’t even have imagined.

Am I gushing? Possibly. But the thing is, after I’d finished it I went straight into Hodges Figgis on Dawson St to buy the next book I’d read (I was in town and had a spare hour, had forgotten my headphones and thought a nice coffee and some reading would be a lovely way to pass that hour), thirsty for more. But nothing I looked at whetted my appetite; I felt eerily dissatisfied, like I was sorry I had read it and could never do so again. I would totally Eternal Sunshine the shiz out of that memory, over and over again.

If you’re looking for me fashion ramblings, you’re in the wrong place. Check me out over on Fash Mob. That is all.