As well as forbidding myself the pleasure of unloading large chunks of Lampedusa's letters onto this blog, I must now control my impulse to quote page upon page of the book I've since moved on to, Why Not Say What Happened, by Ivana Lowell. I highly recommend it. It is, to quote Patricia Hodge as Miranda's mother, 'such fun'. Just to give an idea of what I mean, here are two excerpts.
The first concerns Ivana's mother's mother, whose name was Maureen. 'My mother', Ivana tells us, 'was ashamed of her mother's ... vulgar behaviour. Maureen ... would often arrive at social events wearing a false penis on her nose and a hidden "fart machine" between her legs. She would let the machine rip at opportune moments.'
In that passage I especially love the word 'often' and also the phrase 'opportune moments'.
The second example goes like this:
'A story my mother loved was that of General Franco lying in bed. He was dying. He heard an enormous roar from outside his window. "What is that noise?" the general asked. "It is the people, General; they are coming to say good-bye to you," his secretary informed him. "Good-bye! Where are they all going?" was Franco's perplexed reply.'
No comments:
Post a Comment