Monday 29 October 2007

Untitled Novel Introduction

It was when Alan Court arrived on Olney Road in the cold winter of 1978 wearing a weathered brown suit and only a rucksack to hold his worldly possessions that he began to acquire his reputation for peculiarity. He was a well liked and respected man, chairman of the local committee for the preservation and study of the Latin language, but no one doubted his eccentricity. He did not like, for instance, seeing worms emerge from the earth. He considered them to be ‘unsightly and imprudent’ and for this reason the first thing he did when he arrived in the house he had inherited from his aunt was to board up all windows with a view of the garden. From that day on, he refused to leave the house unless the sun was shining; for he knew very well that worms do not like the sun, just as cats do not like water.

How and why Alan Court found himself stepping off a bus into the crisp white snow which covered much of East London is unknown even to himself. The Court family tree, although relatively small, was not what you would call a close knit one. In fact, when Court’s aunt passed away, an aunt which Court had never met due to an argument at a Christmas dinner nearly two centuries ago separating the family neatly in two, the lack of other known relatives resulted in the somewhat undesirable dwelling being passed on to him. Still, it was infinitely better than his current abode, a one bedroom apartment in Essex, where turning on the gas could result in a small yet uncontained explosion and where a sieve had been attached to the shower head to stop cockroaches and any other disagreeable insects raining on to the unfortunate bather.

It was cold when Court woke up on Monday morning. Looking up at a digital wristwatch he had rudimentarily attached to an overhanging bamboo cane he saw that it was nearly eight o’clock. There was spark of brilliance in the simple contraption Court had conceived; a shrewd, judicious example of pure perceptiveness which only the sharpest of minds could formulate. A glance out of the bathroom window revealed that it had snowed the night before, and Court stepped out of the bathtub with reserved elation. It was unknown to most people why Alan Court chose to sleep in the bathtub, but it is rumored that he did it to trick any intruders into thinking that the house was unoccupied, giving Court the time to trap and restrain the unwanted guest.


Found the first paragraph of this saved on my computer and decided to add a little to it. I may come back to it if I can be bothered.

Sunday 28 October 2007

The English Patient

The Villa

We are introduced to Hana, a young Canadian nurse who is taking care of a badly burned English patient. There is a strong sense of love throughout the chapter, with Ondaatje using lyricism to describe the villa. The English patient had been reading Herodotus' Histories and Hana enjoys reading his notes, annotations and memoirs.