I just saw Colin Firth, playing Prince Albert (“Bertie” to his family,  later to become King George VI), Geoffrey Rush as Speech Therapist Lionel Logue , and Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth, the former queen Mother, in The King’s Speech. Colin Firth’s acting is superb as the stuttering prince.

How are we made to feel sympathy for the main character? We see Bertie trying to cope with the embarrassment of his stutter, and we see other people turn their heads to avoid looking at him as he makes public speeches. We learn that was made to change at the age of five or thereabouts from being left handed to being right handed, and bound into splints to stop him from being “knock kneed.” (See * below for Wikipedia on knock knees.)  He and his brother were taken to their parents for the “daily viewing”, and the nanny would pinch him before they went in to make him cry. The nanny would then leave him without food. He was terrified of  his father. His father shouts at him to get his words out, then tells him to relax. Later Bertie tells Logue that his father once said “I was afraid of my father and my children will be bloody well be afraid of me.” It’s little wonder that he grew up to be described by Logue as “afraid of his own shadow.” “Bertie” makes progress with his speech, but this comes undone when his older brother mocks him.

At the beginning of the film the power-play between Bertie, his wife  and the therapist is cleverly done. Logue insists on seeing the prince at his own rooms, not at the palace, and tells him that it’s “my castle” and they play according to “my rules.” Desperate for a solution to their problem, the royals give in.

The sense of conflict or tension in the film comes from (i) Bertie trying to overcome his stammer (ii) the impending crisis as his older brother, the King, wants to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, (iii) Bertie’s reluctance to assume the throne, (iv) Bertie’s feeling that Logue has become ‘too familiar’ at points, and breaks of the relationship temporarily, and (vi) Bertie’s fear, even after he takes the throne, that, because his brother is still alive, the brother may attempt a comeback.

The audience is made unsympathetic to Wallis Simpson when Bertie and his wife arrive at Balmoral or Sandringham (I can’t remember which) and Simpson refers to it as “ ‘our’ country shack.” The presumptuousness built into this line is wonderful.

I’d recommend this film as five-star material. Go see it.

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* I confess I had to look “knock knees” up in Wikipedia where it is defined as: Genu Valgum, commonly called “knock-knees”, is a condition where the knees angle in and touch one another when the legs are straightened. Individuals with severe valgus deformities are typically unable to touch their feet together while simultaneously straightening the legs.

I’ve recently finished  reading “Gilead” (2004) by Marilynne Robinson. Her first novel, “Housekeeping” (1981) got a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and Gilead got a Pulitzer Prize. It is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. The book is essentially a letter from a father (John Ames) in his seventies to his young son, who is seven years old. The father has some illness – he refers to heart disease on page 4 – and knows he will die soon. He recounts the family history back to the time of his own grandfather’s involvement in the American Civil War. Most of the action takes place in the town of Gilead, Iowa, where the main character, his father, and grandfather have all been Congregationalist Ministers. The narrator is writing in 1956, although this did not become clear to me until he states in one passage that he will vote for Eisenhower in this current presidential election, if he lives long enough (p.107).

The book doesn’t really have a plot in the conventional sense. There is an antagonist: the son of the narrator’s best friend. The son was named John Ames (“Jack”) Boughton after the narrator. The narrator baptised the Jack Boughton, the son of his best friend, and did not know until the baptism that the parents had decided to name the child after him. He didn’t like it.  Throughout the book the author drops hints that Jack Boughton is untrustworthy and deceitful, and we know that Jack Boughton has left home in some sort of disgrace.

Eventually (p.257) we learn that Jack Boughton has a coloured de-facto wife (named Della) and a child in Tennessee, where marriage between blacks and whites is illegal. The wife was a school teacher. The woman’s father does not approve of the relationship, and Jack’s own father doesn’t know of it.

The author is clever in the way she drops references to Jack Boughton’s character through the book.

Jack Boughton talks about going to tent revival meetings because there is no alcohol there (implying that he is an alcoholic) and he refers to working as a shoe salesman, saying  “there’s very little money in it, but you don’t get arrested for it, either.” (p.256).

During this conversation Jack Boughton refers to the narrator’s marriage containing such an age difference.  (I think there is a 20 or 30 year age difference between them but cannot locate  the passage which tells us this.) Consider this passage in which Jack Boughton is telling the narrator about his marriage:

“…’You know a little about being the object of scandal. Unequally yoked and so on. Of course, Della is an educated woman.’ Those were his very words.

Now that was just like him. That meanness. And his remark was not even to the point. And I never felt there was anything the least bit scandalous about my marriage. In her own way, your mother is a woman of great refinement “ (p.262)

Eventually Amis manages to bless jack, and Jack leaves the town, expecting never to come back. (p.276).

I’m surprised that this book managed to hold my attention for as long as it took to finish it. I normally go for fairly tight actioned thrillers, and this is as far away from that genre as it’s possible to get.

Book review: I Am Nujood, Aged 10, Divorced.

I don’t know where or how I bought this book. Perhaps, having read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s account of growing up in Somalia, I was attracted by the title, wondering what life was like for other women in the middle-eastern world. At any rate, the title certainly gets your attention. Since Nujood is only 10 years old, the book is co-authored (or should I say ghost written?) by French journalist Delphine Minoui.

In a nutshell, Nujood grows up in rural Yemen: I confess I had to look it up on a map to discover that it is the country south of Saudi Arabia. If you wanted to go from the Indian Ocean up the red sea to the Suez canal, to the Mediterranean, Yemen would be the first country you passed on your right hand side. Although the legal age of marriage in Yemen is fifteen, her father marries her off at the age of ten. His reasons? That two of her sisters have been kidnapped and that, the family being poor, the marriage of Nujood will mean one les mouth to feed. The husband is about thirty, and takes her virginity on their wedding night, despite having promised to wait until she reached puberty.

The book touches, perhaps unconsciously, on themes that Hirsi Ali deals with, in particular, the way women are taught to be submissive:

“In Khardji, the village where I was born, women are not taught how to make choices.” (p.23)

“Since forever,” writes Nujood, “I have learned to say yes to everything.” (p.18)

After a trip back to her family, she tries to get help from her immediate family, but no one has any advice except her father’s second wife, Dowla, who lives separately to the rest of the family, and who first suggests that she go to court, seek a divorce, and gives her some money to help with the trip. In the court room, after she had told her story to a judge, she attracts the attention of a prominent female lawyer, Shada Nasser.

So what has become of Nujood now? She states: “ I recently left my uncle’s house and returned to live with my parents, because in my country, there are no shelters for girls who are the victims of family violence.” (p.130). The royalties from the book will pay for an education, but Nujood is currently only in second grade. Journalists still come to visit her, and her brother doesn’t like the “shame” all the publicity has brought on the family. I wonder where she’ll be in five years time.

It’s a well written book, and gives an insight into a life most of in the west have no idea about.

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