Lauren Zhang's Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.2 obliterated the memory of anything else. It was hardly a fair race with Lauren riding such a powerful horse with Maxim having set an honest pace on the classy but non-monstrous Tchaikovsky but she still had to nail it. The result was never in doubt, though. 16 years old and a sensation, convincing me completely about a piece that wouldn't normally be very high on a list of priorities. It must be terrifying for established concert musicians to see the talent coming up behind them, not only Lauren but instant superstar Sheku. It was a wonderful concert, top marks to the BBC, notwithstanding the Cliff debacle, and thanks to everybody for it.
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Meanwhile, taking time out from Julian Barnes and Ali Smith, I found Kathryn Simmonds' novel, Love and Fallout. I liked Kathryn's poems and so was interested to see the novel, a more substantial thing than one might expect at 349 pages.
I might not have actively campaigned for some sort of formalist or 'death of the author', post-structuralist approach to texts but I have nurtured the hope that writing was about sentences, syntax, form and such and less about gender or identity. I thought it was simply my fault that I couldn't tell which bits of Jane Austen were supposed to be funny and which not when actually I found it all quite dull.
But, even if there are more divisions within feminism than ways in which it divides itself from a macho-centric culture (and I'm sure we would all like to do that), one needs must tread so carefully because somebody somewhere will take it upon themselves to be offended whatever you say.
Love and Fallout is an excellent book and I hope I'm somewhere near a 2:1 essay mark if I say it is an affectionate satire. Its depiction of the Greenham Common Women's protest seems to capture its earnestness, its sloganizing, its die-hard commitment as well as its absurdity in just the right measure. I realize I may not have been its main target audience but I'm enjoying it nonethelesss and it's great to see some poets moving so easily into the novel and doing so well at it when others, (me), can only knock out the most formulaic 50 thousand words in order to say one's done it and then hide it as soon as possible.
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The TLS crossword was a piece of cake last week, being music-themed, but the double proved beyond me with a failure in Saturday's Times, not being able to put away 23 down, Come to main track (4), -A-E. I dare say it's one of the easiest in the grid, if only one could see it but I can't. I was in on goal, six yards out, just needing to side foot it in and I missed. I thought I'd seen the last of such nightmares 40 years ago but now it translates into crosswords.
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A very gorgeous walk at Bursledon this afternoon was enhanced by any number of things, the joy of handing out copies of The Perfect Book, more people hearing First Three Tales, much more than that and, what more can one ask for, an overgrown church graveyard. They are all sublime,
