Illness, books and Ripley

Dad had to go into hospital last week. When my mum called and she said those reminiscent words: “dad’s in hospital”, there was part of me that just slumped, went: yes, of course. Because there was something inevitable about it. We’ve said many times over the last four and half years: he’s been very lucky. And by that we mean that he hasn’t had any major complications or ill effects from his heart transplant (apart from nearly dying of COVID) unlike many of his fellow transplant patients.

This time it was pneumonia. Presumably a bug that got on top of his poor immune system and COVID-weakened lungs, and turned into serious infection that needed a week of IV antibiotics, lots of tests and a close eye. He’s out now — on Tuesday he messaged the family WhatsApp group “release the hound Smithers, and the hound was released” — and reports that Norwich hospital was very good (he and mum were holidaying in Norfolk by the sea when he went downhill).

I find myself constantly anxious about the health of my dad. Made so much worse by his apparent complete lack of anxiety about it. Fearlessness is generally perceived as a good thing but, let me tell you, its absence can make us vulnerable. Fear is an innate human instinct — fight, flight, remember to take your life-saving pills — there to protect us from harm or, indeed, death. What happens when you don’t consider potential consequences? Well, anything.

So he has been lucky. Some of his friends have been less lucky.

I’m writing a story at the moment about a girl obsessed with tracking her father’s whereabouts on the Find my Friends app. She checks his little icon — a photo of his smiling face — multiple times a day as if knowing where he is on the map of the world in real time could protect him from danger. Art reflects life, when you need it to. Art is my favourite thing to turn trauma into.

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I’ve been finding comfort in the signs of Spring, and in books.

The days are getting so much longer and the evenings are light. Sometimes when the clouds conform, the sky over the Green in our village is pink candy floss from the fairground. Sweet and fleeting. It’s amazing what it does, a bit of Vitamin D straight to the face. We say it every year don’t we? It’s nice to have a bit of sunshine finally! But it is. It’s nice to go for a short walk and, even though the temperature is barely touching double figures, feel the blanketing warmth of the direct sun. It’s such a mood booster. I sat in the garden last weekend, for the first time this year. Jeremy sunbathed on the table beside me, waking now and then to aggressively stare at the collared doves making a nest in the satellite dish, and I lounged in my deck chair with a cup of coffee and a book. Freshly washed bedsheets billowed like sails on the line.

I’ve been reading Rural Hours by Harriet Baker which tells the story of Virgina Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann’s relationship to the countryside, the ways in which they were invigorated by moving to rural villages, slower lives, more time outside and the ritualistic digging for potatoes in dirt. Their work was transformed along with their inner lives. It’s a wonderful book about how landscapes move us and inspire a new type of creativity and peace.

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Another book I’ve read and enjoyed recently: No Judgement by Lauren Oyler. I’ve been amused by the discourse around this book. Perhaps (and this seems to be Oyler’s perspective) a literary critic is fun to criticise. I’m not saying there is no basis in the criticism — a lot of it is, understandably, subjective — they dislike her attitude to antidepressants or find her references to the downfall of Gawker a bit ‘done’. But I think she’s a masterful essay writer. I like the tangents her mind takes us on and the way they return back to the original point in a surprising way, offering more insight and heft than we’d have had without the long, meandering route. She’s also, in true Hannah Horvath fashion, genuinely a voice of a generation. She takes the internet seriously. Older critics and culture writers sniff when their younger counterparts write about Twitter as if it matters. But it does matter, and thinking it a silly thing to write serious cultural essays about is… silly. Let’s always take seriously a beast that can both make an unknown author a millionaire and encourage the kind of division films like Civil War (go see it! it’s amazing!) do well at warning us against.

Finally, some thoughts on Ripley, the new 8 hour Netflix adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith thriller. Andrew Scott and Johnny Flynn star, so it has a huge amount of promise. They are both fantastic and Andrew Scott is perhaps the perfect Tom Ripley — his eyes do a lot of work in this show, which is good because the dialogue, when it’s actually there, does not. My first problem with it is simply that it’s in black and white. Call me a philistine, but if there are any directors reading this (lol), please stop using B&W as a device to signal how high-brow you are. It is pretension of the highest order. Films were in B&W when camera technology did not allow for colour, so to use it now is — obviously — nothing but a stylistic choice and IMHO that style is… pompous. The story takes place in Italy and honestly the way Steven Zaillian gate keeps the majesty of expansive shots of the Mediterranean and the subtle pastels of tiny Italian towns had me RAGING. I wanted to like it, and I was willing to put my B&W opinions to one side but then, after three episodes, I realised it was actually — in its interior, slow, tedium — actually incredibly dull.