(no subject)

Today I've been reading from two books, Nick Hornby's Slam, which I finished today, and A S Byatt's The Children's Book, which I re-started today (I started it for the first time a bit before my research essay was due, and then thought better of it because it is tremendously thick.) The difference between the two is... well, really astounding. I already wasn't thrilled with Slam because I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead yesterday - I'd never read or seen it before - and it suffered rather in comparison to that, which is tremendously, self-consciously clever. But because I am rather a snob about literature and tend to be scathing about stuff that thinks it's highbrow I was still enjoying, ish, Slam. Then I finished it and picked up this and... I just can't describe the difference. Perhaps it's just that I found the protagonist of Slam a bit dim and the subject matter (teenage parenthood) not especially edifying, but The Children's Book is just a different class of work. Tremendously absorbing, engaging - and, yes, it's a thinly fictionalised life of E. Nesbit, with this rather delicious quote from Byatt:

I started with the idea that writing children's books isn't good for the writers' own children. There are some dreadful stories. Christopher Robin at least lived. Kenneth Grahame's son put himself across a railway line and waited for the train. Then there's JM Barrie. One of the boys that Barrie adopted almost certainly drowned himself. This struck me as something that needed investigating. And the second thing was, I was interested in the structure of E Nesbit's family - how they all seemed to be Fabians and fairy-story writers.

So, you know, it's basically fiction about the writers of Victorian children's literature, lots of talking about Wm. Morris and the British Museum and you know, names that I recognise! It makes me feel like my education is slightly relevant! But also, the writing is just delicious. Hornby really can't stand up by comparison.

BRB in a week when I'm finished...