LONELY PLANET: CHINA

LONELY PLANET: CHINA various

China by Lonely Planet Publications

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Oh dear. This book does have an awful lot of bad reviews. And unlike a fictional novel, this is hardly subjective; if the facts are wrong or the information isn't there, a guidebook fails in its most basic purpose.



Although . . . it didn't fail for me. Perhaps this is because I used an earlier edition (I was in China for a year from August 2003 to August 2004) and it's gone deeply downhill since then. Perhaps it is because the Olympics changed everything. Perhaps it really is subjective after all. But all I can say is the China LP was an absolute godsend during my year in the Middle Kingdom and now, with its copious annotations, dogeared corners and whiff of multiple food spillages, one of my favourite and most cherished posessions.



I love the Lonely Planet. I've used Rough Guide and found it too vague (which is obviously the idea, albeit not mine) and other guides whose names now escape me, it was so so long ago, but I always return to this. Guide to guide, they vary wildly, largely because the authors are extremely influential on the literary style and ratings are based on their opinions rather than facts. But their general layout is always the same and once you've used one, you know exactly how to refer to them all.



In my experience, LP gives you enough information to be going on with, but never feels like it is telling you what you must or must not do. Suggestions are open-ended and (unlike RG), the authors don't write sneeringly when they mention upmarket joints or touristy locations. They'll always give alternatives, but splashing out or going for the easy option is neither derided nor encouraged. It's your trip; it's up to you.



Prices are inevitably wrong but that's because hotels and restaurants rarely set them in stone in the first place; plus, no doubt, the Olympics will have hiked up everything in sight. I use them as a general guide and never expect to pay exactly what they mention but I trust their opinions and the maps are always accurate. Photos are beautiful, background information fascinating, practical advice invaluable. The opening chapter descriptions of each province used to give me goosebumps when I was planning my trip and now they bring back searingly sharp memories of my experiences. I would read it again now, just for entertainment.



China is not a country to which I would advise the first-time backpacker to venture. It's tough, it's alien, it's more brain-achingly vast than you can possibly imagine, but it's also incredibly rewarding, fascinating and in my opinion, having covered most of the country and used this wonderful (heavy) book whilst doing so, absolutely worth it.



I'm about to visit Argentina and one of the first things I bought was a Lonely Planet. Despite this imminent trip lasting a mere fortnight, I can't imagine leaving home without my trusty reference guide. Book to book, writers change and opinions may vary but one thing you can't accuse them of is lack of heart. The enthusiasm for travelling and their country of choice is palpable and infectious. Never make the mistake of idly picking up a Lonely Planet in a Waterstones to kill time or you'll be perusing the British Airways website before you even realise what's happened. (That happened to me once . . . I ended up in Fiji). If I could write for LP, I would. As it is, I'm going to settle for reading; as second-best options go, I've experienced an awful lot worse.



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Mika: Sadler's Wells (gig)

Mika: Sadler's Wells
The Acoustic Tour 8th June 09

Mika's acoustic tour was sparked by an incident during his tour of America, when the lorry carrying all of his equipment became stranded on a mountain pass. Unwilling to simply cancel the show, Mika and his team soldiered on with an "acoustic" set, a stage covered with a bizarre selection of props and a generally haphazard approach. Deciding to produce an entire tour along these lines may seem to be verging on the insane but then Mika has never trodden the well-worn path . . . and, as usual, this appears to have worked out rather well.

Performing on a stage presumably inspired by a 60s vision of the future, Mika was surrounded by a mountainous set covered in what looked like silver foil, and orchestra members tucked away into the folds of sparkly fabric. From the moment he stepped on stage, he commanded the crowd's attention and was a constant source of enthusiasm and effervescent energy. Holding a gig in a real theatre could have fallen flat on its face but despite being in the last row of the upper circle, my sister and I still felt entirely part of the action. This is perhaps not surprising, since being at the back of Sadler's Wells is probably closer to the stage than the even first row at the O2. It was small, intimate and for that reason, all the more memorable.

The song selection was spot-on, divided equally between the lesser-known tracks of his new album (some of which are available from his website) and the huge number of crowd pleasers which dominate Life In Cartoon Motion, his original outing. All of the performers remained on stage the whole time despite the guest soprano and tenor only duetting with him once each, happily getting involved with the dancing for other songs. Mika sung and played the piano beautifully, stumbling over his words and tuning for one song only but being cheerfully self-deprecating enough to make me forget that it was one of my favourite pieces. In fact, it was his humour and charm which really boosted an otherwise vocally great performance into a truly noteworthy experience.

The only downsides to the entire evening were the delay in starting and the tragically bad support act. Although nobody expects a gig to start on time, somehow holding it in a theatre rather than an arena or gig-dedicated location (such as the Shepherd's Bush Empire or Brixton Academy) does inspire belief that the doors really will open when the ticket says they will. Having finally been allowed into the theatre some 40 minutes later, we were then forced to wait for another half an hour before the arrival of the support act: a female duet who played guitar and sang. Badly. Again, the downside of not being in an arena was that it made it far harder to leave surreptitiously and enter again just in time for the main show, especially as we were in the middle of the row. We realised, as they started on their fourth song (or was it their third? Or their fifth? It's hard to tell, they all sounded exactly the same) that we were in it for the long haul and the thought did make me die just a little inside.

Still, if you can put up with that rubbish then Mika's performance is worth it in every way. At times belting it out like a diva, at others crooning, sometimes poppy, sometimes gentle, Mika is a truly wide-ranging vocalist with a great head for lyrics and a witty, mischievous side which certainly comes out in a gig as intimate and comparatively informal as this. Although he took a plunge getting rid of the high-tech equipment which so many gig lovers have come to expect over the years, Mika's risk-taking strategies have paid off. To some he may simply be a master of pop but to those lucky enough to be in the audience that night, Mika is a true musician.

"Kiss Chase" by Fiona Walker

KISS CHASE
Fiona Walker

My literary tastes are wide and varied, and I am a fan of the unfortunately named “chick lit” as much as the next girl in search of a mindless, trashy read. But there’s chick lit and there’s chick lit. It’s a term which, unfairly, widely encompasses pretty much every novel written by women, for women, including wonderful authors such as Marian Keyes and Joanne Harris, right through to the pitiful offerings from ex-page 3 girls and the archaic Mills & Boon. Reading the worst of it is like eating a McDonalds whilst staggering home from a night out on the tiles. At first it seems like the only thing that will satisfy your craving. After a few tasty mouthfuls, the flavour dulls and the juice leaks out. Half way through, you wonder why you’re bothering, and it’s only the fact that you’ve made it this far that forces you to persevere and finish the blasted thing. At the end, your bloated stomach is surprisingly satisfied, although it’s dampened by the fact that you are mired in cold shame and feeling embarrassingly dirty (and not in a good way). Five minutes after forcing the remaining bites into your ever-resisting mouth, you realise that you are incredibly empty. By the time you get home, you’re so ravenous, you may as well not have had anything to eat at all. Still, at least you can blame the booze.

I was travelling around New Zealand last year and searching for a read which would require minimum brain power and still provide a few laughs when I found Fiona Walker’s depressingly awful offering lingering on a stand outside a charity shop. Costing the equivalent of about 40p, it seemed bad manners not to give it a go, so I parted with my cash and eagerly set about starting. It didn’t take long before I was weary of Walker’s repetitive writing style and uninspiring characters, predictable scenes and tired relationships. You can’t feel empathy for the character of Saskia, who deserves a good slapping, nor for Phoebe, her bizarrely long-suffering “friend”. Rather than coming across as loyal, she appears spineless, dull and stupid, causing me to lose interest in her before the main plot line had even kicked off. It also irritated me profusely that Walker continually referenced the fact that Saskia was fat, as if this in itself was evidence of her emotional problems, and implying that once she had lost the weight she would be magically cured. Never mind the depression or the fact that she is a psychotic bitch, Saskia’s a size 16! Holy mother of god, it’s a national crisis! Do only beautiful people have happy lives in Walker’s plastic world? Why is it that those who do not possess supernatural beauty (apart from Saskia in her “Mental Period”, only peripheral characters with little impact or relevance) are deeply unattractive, sad, grey creatures who paw after the blissful, fabulous, beautiful, adored brilliance of the two central characters, Phoebe and the interminable Felix, but can never hope to achieve their greatness? Apparently if you don’t have legs as long as a redwood and cheekbones that could shave a dormouse, you don’t deserve happiness or a loving relationship; and more to the point, nobody would care even if you did.

Hello, Fiona? Remember Bridget Jones? Helen Fielding’s characters aren’t exactly realistic but they’re a damn sight more down-to-earth than these ones; and when their experiences and reactions are over the top, unlikely and ridiculous, we know full well that Fielding has her tongue lodged firmly in her cheek. Walker, however, seems to take herself far too seriously, which is probably her downfall. She needs to lighten up – at the appropriate moments – and try having a heroine with dodgy hair, or a hero whose six-pack is more likely to be kept in the fridge.

Why is it that so many chick lit authors feel the need to have a heroine who doesn’t think she’s that special to look at, but according to the rest of the world, is stunningly beautiful? Why are they inspired to make her act like someone with special needs? A decent author should be able to create comedy out of any situation, without needing to have a character fall tit over arse down some stairs and wind up with a pair of knickers on her head. Why does every book end “happily ever after” when they get their man? What happened to female emancipation?

Fiona Walker wanders blindly into all of these literary chick-lit clichés, and adds a few of her own for good measure. It should be a stone-carved rule that if an author insists on using slang terms, they must be varied regularly. Once a colloquialism has been used once, it is far more noticeable the second time; and by the fourth or fifth, the reader is begging for a thesaurus. The phrase which springs to mind is the use of “tight” for “drunk”. Although the deliberate misinterpretation of this word is ruminated upon at one point, that is no excuse to use it EVERY SINGLE TIME someone is tipsy, rat-arsed, or three sheets to the wind. For god’s sake, being drunk is surely a phrase with more euphemisms than any other in the English language (except, perhaps, sex). If she’d simply said “drunk” without variation, I doubt I would have noticed. But a little bit of slang goes a long, long way; especially something as old-fashioned as “tight”, which now serves simply as a regular milestone for Walker’s lack of range and cringingly dates the novel. A little imagination please, I beg of you! The same goes for espadrilles; a shoe in which, according to Walker, every woman in the UK encases her warm-weather tootsies. Whenever there’s a mention of shoes, they’re always bloody espadrilles! Ok, so it’s the summer, and Phoebe’s a casual, breezy kook: WE GET IT. But couldn’t she please slip her feet into a pair of sandals? Find some flats? Stagger in stilettos? Fling on some flip-flops? Whack on some wedges? It may be a petty complaint, but it sums up the rest of the novel, and was largely responsible for my increasing desire to chuck the dreary tome at the wall.

Walker’s characters are two-dimensional, ridiculous stereotypes, underdeveloped and, honestly, quite boring. The book is far too long and clearly has an incompetent editor. The language is limited and the storyline reeks of desperation. I anticipated that this bumper novel would be an enjoyable holiday read. It wasn’t. I persevered with it in the naïve, optimistic hope that it would get better towards the end. It didn’t. It leaves me with no question as to why this genre is viewed with such contempt when authors like Fiona Walker are championed in its ranks as literary royalty. Excuse me, but I’d like my 40p back.

A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth

A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth

Understandably, the first comment that anyone makes of this book is inevitably shock at the sheer size. At 1,475 pages, it is a labour of love, and there are certainly points throughout when you wonder if it will eventually be worth the time, effort, and undoubted wrist ache. Given it by a friend at the start of my gap year, it took me three years - and four countries - to finally steel myself to start reading. I worried that after so much time, and with such high expectations, it would result in disappointment, and no desire to complete the epic read it had taken me so long to begin.

To my surprise, it turned out to be one of the best books I have ever read. Without a doubt, it has its drawbacks, most of which stem from the size; a large one of these is the fact that there are sometimes gaps of several hundred pages between meeting and revisiting a character, and the reader is expected to remember exactly where and when his or her tale was temporarily halted. Many of the names are also difficult to remember and associate with a certain person, especially from a Western point of view, since they are frequently unfamiliar and similar-sounding. There are many unnecessarily long-winded and drawn-out sections, mostly conversation, which can lead the mind to wander, and when it comes time to put down the book it is often extremely difficult to make the effort to pick it up again. And certainly, I wondered with alarming regularity whether I would in fact ever reach the end.

Despite these relatively minor quibbles - and perhaps necessary evils - this book is undeniably a masterpiece. A Suitable Boy gives readers with little or no knowledge of Indian history and culture the chance to learn about this fascinating country from an intimate standpoint and many different, and highly believable, points of view. Readers who have already visited India may perhaps find that it strikes different chords to those who have not, but this is not to say that a newcomer to the finer details of this country would be any less able to enjoy and appreciate the world Seth has opened up, enhanced, highlighted and developed.

Seth's ultimate mastery lies within characterisation; he has a unique ability to create histories, personalities and lives for even the seemingly most inconsequential of characters. His dialogue is flawless, and effortlessly attributable to the vast numbers of people who pepper the pages. Within a few pages, you instantly care for and sympathise with each one of them, and truly feel their emotions as you follow their lives and journeys; a cliche, perhaps, but true nonetheless, and perhaps the most admirable quality of the novel.

After such a long amount of time spent with the characters, you feel as if you know them inside-out. Having lived their lives for the 18 or so months the book covers, you wonder, as it draws to a close, how Seth will possible draw the novel to an acceptable and satisfactory conclusion. It was with some trepidation that I approached the end of the book, and was delighted to find that, true to form, he drew loose ends together and completed the stories for each character in ways that I had simultaneously never expected and yet completely understood. Lessons are learnt, journeys are made, decisions are reached; life goes on, the world continues to revolve, and you know that even as you turn the final page, the characters will carry on with their lives, unheeded by the lack of constant observation. You have merely been privileged to witness a small slice of their everyday lives in the beautifully evocative city of Brahmpur, and I will forever be grateful to Seth for allowing us an intimate insight into the life and death, city and countryside, politics and history, culture and humanity of this intriguing, fascinating world.

Misfortune: A Novel, by Wesley Snape

Misfortune: A Novel
by Wesley Stace

Anyone has studied anything to do with gender, sexuality and the accompanying background psychology, will find this book fascinating. At its core, it tells the story of a boy who is raised to believe he is a girl by his strange adoptive father; a reclusive member of the landed aristocracy who lost his beloved sister as a child. Since it is the 1800s and "Rose" is shielded from meeting anyone but the staff and their families, the deception is relatively easy to maintain; not least from the boy himself. As "Rose" grows up, his - or her - accepted female status is challenged, both externally and from his own reservations about his questionable identity.

Running parallel to the main theme of gender-bending are innumerable sub-plots, side-stories and extra information which, despite tying together neatly in the end, are tiring to wade through before you get there. The plot line is long and convoluted, and at times it does require considerable efforts to follow it; not to mention a relatively in-depth knowledge of Greek myths, which are referenced throughout. The characters are numerous and bear similar names to one another, so much so that I found myself keeping a book mark in one page where the main character describes his (or her) relatives, to which I constantly flicked back. It's not a short book but there is plenty of action to keep it moving along, and the thought-provoking theme is usually controversial without being patronising or forceful.

"Wesley Stace" is in fact a nom de plume for the musician John Wesley Harding, and he successfully employs his original passion, keeping songs and music constantly involved and providing a common theme. Having said this, Stace is not a particularly accomplished writer. He has a lot to learn about fluidity, style and editing - but he does weave a good yarn and presents a well-balanced argument about gender, sexuality, identity, and the effects of nature versus nurture. I wonder if, had I not studied these very subjects mere months before I stumbled across this book, I would have found it as fascinating as I did; but either way, that was the mindset in which I read the book, and for me it paid off. Sensitively handled, and with a satisfying (albeit implausibly neat) ending, I enjoyed it, although whether or not I would choose to read another book by the same author remains to be seen.