The Island at the End of the World by Sam Taylor

What would you do if the end of the world was truly nigh? In this strange and dramatic post-apocalyptic story the unnamed “Pa” takes his three children off in an ark and ends up on an island. All is well until the arrival of Will and then everything goes wrong.

It would be a shame to spoil the story by saying much more but you can be sure that not everything is quite as it seems in this tale of fear and jealousy. Sam Taylor uses some interesting and at times disturbing (even annoying) literary techniques to tell this story which explores the relationships between father and children, and between reality and imagination.

There are echoes of the Genesis story here with a flood and an ark, and the arrival of an interloper in the garden that is the island of the title. And the author seems to be hitting out God and religion strongly with his Biblical misquotes and distortions (even the use of a form of King James Bible textual style is surely significant) but it is not clear what the point he is trying to make here. Certainly it is a good story and its telling is compelling but atmosphere is always claustrophobic and you get to the stage where you just want it all to end.

Sam Taylor is a young writer with a couple of novels behind him. You might not always like what he is writing about but he has undoubtedly has a rich imagination and a real strength in his story-telling.

Great jacket design too...

A walk in the snow...

After a very disruptive week of moderately heavy snow and some interesting driving conditions, it was good to get out and walk across our valley on a cold, clear morning. Walking when no-one else is about is always a special delight and it was certainly quiet along our local section of the Nene valley way. The lakes were frozen and birds were everywhere, probably searching for food.

It was cold but still, and so trudging through snow about four inches deep was surprisingly warming. You don’t realise the extra effort it takes to lift your knees that bit higher and to brace yourself with each footstep as you hit either clean snow or ice. But it is rare that we get a chance to see the landscape looking so clean and fresh.

Coming back home, with backs of thighs burning slightly from the effort, it was good to enjoy warm coffee and then just look out at our frozen world. Days like this always remind me of Robert Frost's poetry...

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village though.

He will not see me stopping here,

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,

To stop without a farmhouse near,

Between the woods and frozen lake,

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep,

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

The art of good storytelling?

I dunno, is it me? Or is it difficult to find a book that tells a really good story well? I'm talking about novels published in the past few years...not ever. For me, reading is really all about that - the story, and I love a good story. But a good story is not enough to make a book good, it's much more than that but at the heart of every good piece of literature is a good story. That's why Shakespeare is so timeless - his plays are based on cracking good tales.

So in the last week I have read two books and both of them are just the telling of a relatively simple story.

The Mission Song by John Le Carre is a bit of a political thriller as told by one Bruno Salvador (Salvo), an interpreter who gets caught up in a rather dodgy bit of a conspiracy about the Congo. It's got its entertaining moments and the interweaving of a kind of love story is clever but the whole plot line is barely credible really and the ending is sort of inevitable. There are large chunks of the story that just drag along at times. Considering Le Carre's past pedigree for highly complex and intellectually demanding spy novels, this is a bit lame really.

And then there was The Dig by John Preston. Told by four different characters, this is the story of the first dig that took place at Sutton Hoo House in Suffolk just before the outbreak of war in 1939. This was the site of one of the most outstanding archaeological excavations in Britain. It famously revealed a huge Anglo-Saxon ship and other artifacts that made historians rethink their ideas about the so-called Dark Ages. But the story, whilst at times exciting in this fictional re-telling of some of the finds, often falls into such banality as to be almost tedious. I guess there is some validity in relating the ordinariness of the people and the way they go about their tasks but it just evaporates into nothing at the end.

Both OK books but fairly forgettable and really not worthy of the somewhat over-blown reviews that get the inevitable quotes on inside and back cover. I move on, looking for yet another good story, well told.

Brothers and sisters

Family is a strange thing isn't it? It is indeed a truism that you can choose your friends but not your family. So, I am proud and delighted to be able to know that our son and daughter - now both married and late in their 20's with very separate and different lives, are not only willing to talk to each other but even to appear smiling in the same photo!

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

I guess there's little chance that this excellent book will sell in anything like the same numbers as Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion", but this eloquent demolition of the modern atheistic arguments for the non-existence of God should be recommended reading for anyone who is swayed by the assertion by Dawkin's and his ilk that it is just absurb to believe in God.

Timothy Keller is American but I am grateful that this book is not so typical of the US style of publishing. It is very readable and one of the best set out explanation of the myths and fallacies of the atheists position coupled with an equally well argued case for the existence of God, and inevitably the rightness of the Christian faith. But Keller is no fundamentalist and is very open to explore the counter-claims of other religions. Probably one of the best books of this type since the days of C S Lewis's "Mere Christianity".

I have to confess to not having read Dawkin's book in full (just enough to know that I really didn't want to finish it!) but Keller's book set me to thinking on why exactly Dawkin's wrote The God Delusion. This is, I suspect, not a new arguement but it goes like this: However false Dawkin's reasoning is, it is a book that shows clearly that man is capable of reasoning. If this reasoning leads to the believe that there is no God, then this inevitably leads to the conclusion that our existence is totally pointless - from a cosmic, communal or individual point of view. Anything we do, say or think has no impact on anything and is totally insignificant. Maybe Dawkin's would agree with this? But if that is so, then why bother to write a book about such a belief and why bother to so demonstrably promote such a belief? After all it is just a meaningless activity. Even if you disagree with those that hold to a faith in God, so what? - who cares? - why not let them live with their delusion?

I am left to wonder whether Dawkin's is less of a true athiest than someone who has, as Keller puts it, been innoculated against the Church rather than against God?

William Edwin "Eddie" Leroy 1915-2008

Today we went to Eddie's funeral. Eddie was my wife's uncle; a dear and wonderful friend to everyone including his extended family.

A day of sadness and joy for the passing of a long life and one that was lived with purpose and great gentleness. A man of faultless manners, a true Christian and a gentleman.

Rest well Eddie.

My bass guitar is 30 years old

Not today, this year. This is what my pride and joy looks like:

It's an Aria SB600 (the SB stands for Super Bass) and it was made sometime in 1979 in a Japanese factory. If your are interested then more info on these brilliant basses can be found at: myweb.tiscali.co.uk/fyfeholt/aria.htm. I've only owned this for about 5 years and got it through ebay for only £150 - a real bargain.

By an interesting coincidence another of my pride and joys was born in 1979. My son, David is a prodigous blogger and may or may not think it's at all cool that he gets a mention here.

1979 is also probably the year when I first starting playing guitar in church - my cheap nylon strung classical - playing the likes of Kum Bay Yah (he,he). Anyway, here I am still playing this good old bass, which is a much better instrument than my poor playing deserves, every couple of weeks or so, and I've just realised it makes me the oldest musician in our church music group. Ouch!