At the heart of Reasons to Stay Alive is the message that the storms pass. In the grip of his breakdown, Haig saw no hope and no future. The illness “lied”, he says in the book. Not only was there a future, what lay ahead was better than the life he’d had before. He’d married the woman he loved, watched his children being born, become a writer. Haig now thanks the illness for “waking him up” and helping him cherish the good times. “The person I became as a result is someone I wouldn’t have become without it.”
Haig’s newest book delivers the same message, only this time to children. A “truth pixie” tells a worried child that some of her worst fears will be realised – but there’s also joy ahead. “You don’t need to tell children that everything is going to be perfect because if they’re dependent on ‘perfect’, it will be very stressful,” says Haig. “Life will have some terrible things in it – but those terrible things will make the good things shine brighter. It’s a hard lesson at any age. But if you’re going to have that lesson, be told it by a pixie!”
But when I read last week of Edward Allhusen, a writer who has gathered together in a book called Betrumped (v to cheat or deceive) some 600 English words he fears are shortly to become extinct, something about it spoke to me – and not only because “lickspittle” is a term I use quite often. (Alas, there are just so many creeps and suck-ups out there, and lickspittle is not only, being plosive, a very satisfying word to shout when someone’s obsequiousness really gets your goat; it also – think about it – conjures a thoroughly effective picture of whichever worm you happen to be after.)
Perhaps it was the politicians with their reliance on such emptinesses as “going forward” and “a deal that delivers”. Perhaps it was the highly intelligent people I heard last week fall back on the dreaded “journey” to describe something that was not even close to being one (they were talking about having, as judges of a literary prize, read a few books). Either way, I found myself longing to hear such words as pettifogging (the placing of undue importance on petty details) and crapulent (relating to drunkenness). In the matter of vocabulary, I experienced a sudden and powerful yearning for the novel and the lively, the particular and the pungent.
A gingko tree stands outside my bedroom window in Brooklyn. For seven months a year, I see nothing but leaves and sky; at night, the fan-shaped leaves cast flickering shadows on my walls. In October, the leaves turn the brilliant, luminous yellow of a stoplight. And then, one night—this year it was on Thursday—all the leaves fall, blanketing the sidewalk and cars below in gold. The houses across the street rush into view, where they’ll stay until new leaves bud.
Oliver Sachs called this phenomenon the Night of the Gingko. Compared to the slow decline of its deciduous neighbors, the gingko’s rapid defoliation appears to be unnatural. Fall becomes winter overnight. The same night my gingko lost its leaves, a record-breaking fall snowstorm caught the rest of New York’s trees by surprise, loading their leafy boughs up with snow. All night, branches came crashing down in the street, overwhelmed by the combined weight of two substances that rarely touch.
Publishers believe that in this era of Search Engine Optimization, books must have subtitles, whether superfluous or not, and the more wordy the better.
The book's title derives from the proverb "Ambition is putting a ladder to the sky," meaning not simply that it's impossible, but that the fall is a long one. John Boyne's ambition in writing a comic novel about a nasty writer — that's nothing new. But John Boyne's ambition in writing a comic novel about a nasty writer with no scruples who never repents that will make you chuckle morbidly until the last line? That's ambition fulfilled.
If you’re expecting a Poirot mystery, you’re getting your expectations fulfilled. Hannah draws you into the plot and keeps you turning the pages, unveiling the solution with the required assemblage of characters in the drawing room. She also matches the typically old-style British tone from Christie. For all the millions of fans of the ‘little grey cells’, this book is a welcome offering.