Time for a change

Friday, January 25th., Chiltern Court, London.

I am in the throes of packing for a holiday to the Canary Islands, allegedly a place where it is always Spring. I do hope so because I have reached that stage in the British winter when the weather is getting me down. Not that it has been particularly cold, or particularly wet (come to think of it, it hasn't been very wet at all) but a pervasive greyness assaults the spirit and depresses the mind. I hope for some warmth, and some blue skies, and some colour; in fact I long for them.

In the meantime I have finished an interesting and unusual book titled "The Lost Child" by Rahel Sanzara. Sanzara is said to be the pseudonym of a famous German actress, who apparently suffers from an unnatural objection to publicity. It is the story of the murder of a little girl by a boy. The author has considerable gift of narrative, and she has invented a plot which, while perhaps somewhat antipathetic to the normal mind (such as my own), is worked out very effectively indeed. The abnormal psychology is very well done.

German critics call "The Lost Child" a masterpiece. I don't. I call it rather the brilliant outpouring of a highly emotional woman who was mastered by 'a great notion for a story', and who freed herself from the obsession of it by writing it down at a temperature of 104 degrees. I remember reading once that Rider Haggard wrote his novels 'at white heat'. He has something in common then with Rahel Sanzara. Bit of an odd name (even an invented name) for a German woman that. But the book is certainly 'enthralling' as people say and induces you to read it 'from cover to cover', also as people say. Certainly it is more enthralling than the majority of detective novels. Of course I read it in translation and this may have detracted somewhat from my estimate of it as a potential masterpiece.

And now I must get on with selecting a variety of books to accompany me on my travels. I have several novels to hand but also like to read a little history and perhaps a biography or two. Maybe some popular science, but no philosophy! Not of any kind.