Tag: reviews

Book Review: Lessons Learned, by Sydney Logan

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A town reliant on the two pillars of school and church, Sycamore Falls is a profoundly conservative community in the American South, named after the falls that provide a local beauty spot. An English teacher named Sarah has returned to her hometown from Memphis, where a violent incident about which she feels guilty has traumatised her. Going back to live in the house that her grandmother has bequeathed to her, romance blooms when she meets fellow teacher, Lucas, newly arrived from New York City. Their relationship is conducted against the background of events surrounding a troubled student jock called Matt.

Sarah sees Sycamore Falls and the house where she used to live with her grandmother as a place of safety. Her need to return to her roots has taken her by surprise. It’s a response to her witnessing a shooting incident at her former school involving a vulnerable student followed by the end of her relationship with an unsupportive partner. She craves the familiarity of home where she had a special bond with her grandmother, who cared for her after the death of her parents when she was 16 years old.

Spoiler Alert (but not really)
A small town gal returning home from the big, bad city is familiar territory as is a tormented student struggling with his sexuality. I don’t think I’m giving anything away as Matt being gay is kinda flagged up before the reveal, so it doesn’t come as any surprise. He’s the football team’s quarterback and the story begins with him dating the head cheerleader. The author displays a neat sense of the book’s self-awareness. Matt even describes himself as “a walking stereotype”. It’s easy to imagine this as a TV movie, complete with spectacular mountain scenery.

The Sin Bin

When Matt’s sexuality is revealed, the town is divided with many people at school, on the football team and in church ostracising him. His few allies include our romantic pair, Sarah and Lucas. Oh, they disapprove of his ‘lifestyle’, but they don’t think that should affect anyone’s relationship with him or treatment of him. I was waiting for at least one character to come along and say that, actually, there is nothing wrong with being gay, but no one ever does. No one is put forward to offer a counter argument.
All credit to the author for incorporating a controversial social issue in the romance genre, but it won’t go far enough for the more liberal readership. The message is to disapprove of the ‘sin’ and not the ‘sinner’. Even the Falls is a metaphor for sins being washed away.

The only argument to support the disapproval is that the Bible says so, so there isn’t any springboard for a debate. There is a lot of talk about tolerance and unconditional love, ironically also inspired by the Bible. Small town life and life in the ‘big city’ is compared in terms of its capacity for tolerance. The author asks the question, are the ugly attitudes of a small town ever a price worth paying for living there?

In Lucas, Sarah finds her soul mate, as he too is coming to terms with an upsetting incident. He’s left New York under a cloud, despite being cleared of all charges, having faced a malicious and false accusation by a student. When Matt’s problems overwhelm him, Sarah and Lucas are determined to defend him. This new situation mirrors the one in which Sarah’s former student in Memphis found himself and her guilt about failing to save him is a compelling motive to save Matt. Helping this young man represents closure for Sarah and the chance to move on from her past.

This might sound unkind, but Sarah is high maintenance. Lucas has the patience of a saint in dealing with her insecurities and mood swings. She is reluctant to let herself go and trust her feelings. This leads to some tension, which sometimes seems to be heading for conflict but it never comes. I was longing for a blazing row, but instead, Lucas dries her tears and sweetly reassures her every time.

The couple’s bond is cemented in the face of Matt’s life spiralling out of control. He’s a sensitive and thoughtful young man, without being insipid. At the other end of the spectrum, his father and his head teacher are reactionary bullies and respond as if he’s grown two heads overnight.

Future Promise

Sydney Logan has a very good ear for dialogue, both dramatic and light-hearted. She doesn’t go in for elongated descriptive passages, so the pace zips along and you certainly want to turn the page to see what happens. The structure of the story is impressive given this is her debut novel.

When Logan looks at the raw emotions of Matt and the people affected by the fall out, it is very powerful and I would have preferred more of that and less of the domestic bliss of our loved up teachers. There was a bit too much “brushing lips” for my taste, but this is a romance novel, after all. I did find Lucas to be impossibly perfect, to the point of being tedious.

I think Sydney Logan has an assured future as a writer. One of the most moving passages is when Matt’s mother makes a speech defending her son to the church congregation. My wish would be for her to explore issues in a more balanced way in her next book and to do more of what she’s good at – describing real emotions.

 

If you have a Kindle and want to read Lessons Learned, you can grab a copy here.

The Good, The Bad, Kermode and Me

Film critic and presenter Mark Kermode goes by many names, including The Good Doctor and Flappy Hands. You may know him from BBC2’s The Culture Show. His most devoted fans, however, tune in to hear his pithy comments on Kermode and Mayo’s Film Reviews on Radio 5 Live every Friday afternoon with Simon Mayo. Kermode and Mayo are a long-standing double act and they squabble like an old married couple.

I met Mark when he was touring his second book, The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex at the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds. A very long queue formed after his talk for him to sign the copies we’d bought. He spent a long time chatting with each one of us, including me, was charming and seemed genuinely interested in all we had to say.

He even gave an impromptu blast on a harmonica that he whipped out of his pocket (Mark plays in a rockabilly band, which explains his haircut). He’s better looking in person, but I digress.

One of the things I like about him is that he’s not a snob. In fact, he’s the very opposite of a snob. If an action blockbuster comes out and he likes it, he’ll say so. Conversely, if a low budget, art house film comes out that he thinks is a load of rubbish, he’ll say so. He often defends films that are considered to be ‘uncool’. Mark simply likes good films, of any genre or time period.

I don’t always agree with his verdicts but he is never short of well informed, witty and entertaining. When he loves something, he is delightfully eloquent, but he is most famous for his rants and also for his pedantry. The rants can go on for a very long time, delivered with much hyperbole and unsurpassed fervour.

Mark has been passionate about films since he was eight years old. Other critics are deeply knowledgeable and entertaining but, for me, no one exudes that pure love of cinema like old Flappy Hands. After watching what must be thousands and thousands of movies (and an awful lot of crap), his enthusiasm is still intact. That’s why he gets so angry…because he cares so much.

In his previous book, It’s Only a Movie, he describes how he got into the world of professional film criticism. In this second book, The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex, he gives us his take on the modern Hollywood scene and the multiplex experience.  There are amusing anecdotes in both books with this latest one kicking off with his hilarious account of trying to get an assistant cinema manager to fix the screening of a film starring Zac Efron wherein the top of Zac’s head was missing. One of Mark’s many soap boxes concerns showing films in the correct Aspect Ratio and when cinemas GET IT WRONG!

As for multiplexes, his tenet is this: there is nothing inherently wrong with them provided they are run properly, but so many of them are run badly. They are like glorified sweet shops with a film casually thrown in. Selling popcorn is the priority and digital projection (digital doesn’t always equal efficiency) is left to its own devices, often without anyone capable of fixing something if it goes wrong. Mark’s opening chapter is aptly titled, ‘Would the Last Projectionist Please Turn Off the Lights’.

Does anyone really like their local multiplex? They are soulless places and they all look, smell and taste the same. Going to the aforementioned Hyde Park Picture House, a charming cinema dating from 1914, is a much pleasanter experience.

Another of Mark’s soap boxes is 3D and there is a chapter devoted to its technical shortcomings. The decision to invest so much money in this recent resurgence is not for any intrinsic artistic merits but as a defensive measure against piracy and to lure us away from watching Blu-ray on our 42-inch TVs with surround sound.

So much money is thrown at so many mediocre projects and it’s disheartening. Mark makes the point that a mainstream, big star film doesn’t have to dumb down. Audiences don’t need to be talked down to, including the all-important 15 – 35 years old, male demographic. He poses this question: Why not make it intelligent while you’re about it? As he points out, it didn’t do Inception any harm.

I’ve been thinking about the level of writing that goes into a lot of hit U.S. TV shows these days, in contrast to a lot of the bland releases that hit our cinema screens. Look at the series, Lost, a brain twister if ever there was one. Give audiences something to challenge them and they lap it up. Meanwhile, original filmmakers outside of the system, including some brilliant British ones, struggle to get their films distributed.

Mainstream cinema would benefit from more intelligent scripts. Mark’s proposal is that it wouldn’t damage the takings, at least. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with car chases and explosions or indeed, charming rom coms. Just spend some of those millions on the screenplay and see what happens. We’re being fed a diet of prequels and sequels with nary an original thought in sight.

Another issue Mark addresses in his latest book is Hollywood’s insistence on making its own versions of foreign language films. These re-makes are rarely as good, but try persuading the industry that distributing the original films would be a more worthwhile venture. When it’s a case of art versus money, there’s only one winner. So, audiences go to see an inferior movie, like feeding on the crumbs or wearing hand me down clothes.

Finally, the book ends with a sad farewell to celluloid, its history and traditions and the magic it has given us. As we boldly go into the digital future, we gain and we also lose. The closing paragraphs may just make you cry.

Film is one of the greatest art forms to come out of the 20th century and look how we treat it. Next time you’re sat in the dark, sucking on your mini-buffet, ask yourself this question. Is this screening worthy of the legacy that the great writers /directors / producers / actors have left us?

It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare every time. Heaven knows, America needed its share of fluff to get it through the Great Depression (the difference being it was mostly well made fluff) and we need it today too. Just every now and then…make us think. In the meantime, I shall bask in the glow of Mark’s rants. And for any Kermode fans reading this – “Hello Jason Isaacs” – they’ll know what that means!