What a thoroughly enjoyable read, picked up on impulse only this week. it might seem odd to start a review with the kind of words one might save for a closing paragraph but this is not one of those pages. I am not trying to sell anyone anything, just hoping to share a little enthusiasm for some bits and pieces I am lucky to come across. This book is part memoir part creative critique of Shakespeares body of work. Along the way exploring many other themes, touching on the work of other writers, including TS Eliott, Ted Hughes and Virginia Woolf.
While proving mostly scrutable to someone as thinly read as me it probably reads a bit disjointed when examining the various ouvres and formative genre definers as those named. For someone who appreciates the odds are landing this is a book you might enjoy for those who ge really breeze past the Penguin classics sections in a book shop.
I particularly enjoyed the earlier chapters when he pulled back the curtain obscuring the details of his father's life, who sounded like a very fine da indeed. Jonathan Batex writes movingly and honestly as he wrestles with the minutae of memory, reassembling the furniture of the rooms in our heads where memory resides. I wonder if he experienced trauma at picking at the scabs of memory. I say scabs but I am not suggesting memory as wounds, just that sometimes raking the past does indeed hurt.
As I have grown to appreciate the works of Shakespeare I see the misnomer of labelling them comedies or tragedies. None of his plays are entirely tragic nor are all of them are funny. Very much like real life. But what do I know. As I said, the book is part memoir, appreciating his luck is having a da who loved the work of Shakespeare, which aided him to survive some traumatic war time experiences, at least buying his spirits. In those early chapters we learn that Mister Bates Senior had a set of Shakespeares Complete Works. Books which he read not only read and reread, but books which he annotated, writing in the margins. Actually listing performances which he attended, with such legendary performances as John Geilguid and Laurence Olivier. So much was left unsaid between father and son, in the way of such things. The hubris of youth plays its part but that does not come across in the memoir. The Bate family units, both generations, sound like they did their very best to enrich each others lives, rich in feelings and support for each other.
The reader does indeed follow the writer from class room to an emergency room, with a few steps at theatres along the way. Life might well be a stage but life leaves us unsure of its entrances and exits. We spend a life time learning. In shakespeares company, if we have grace an wit to invite him into our lives. He always accepts.
