Sunday Salon: A world in my armchair

This week I’ve mingled with sweaty unwashed bodies in one of London’s suburbs and savoured the tang of oranges growing on a mountainside in South America. And all without having to queue at a check out desk or wait at a ticket counter. I didn’t even have to be teleported to experience the unwholesome stench of fourteenth century London or feel the oppressive heat of a Columbian village.

The two books I’ve been reading this week remind me that the ability to conjure up a strong sense of a place and a time  is one of the aspects of good writing that I love. At its best it can make me completely oblivious to anything else. The clouds may be glowering and the news reports full of yet another war somewhere in the world, but in my head I’m somewhere else entirely.

Peter Ackroyd’s The Clerkenwell Tales is set in a period of civil war and has plenty of intrigue and mystery but in the end didn’t live up to its promise in terms of the story line or the characterisation. It did however score high on period detail. I’m now indebted to Ackroyd for enriching my knowledge of now defunct occupations like pardoners and summoners and enriching my vocabulary  too.  I doubt my local Tesco store sells ypocras and mawmenee (drinks) , or tuzziemuzzies which I think are some kind of plant. But I shall delight in calling someone an old fetart, just to see their reaction.  My review of  The Clerkenwell Tales is here.

Evelio Rosero’s The Armies is also set during a period of civil war.  The main character is Ismael, a retired old school teacher who lives with his wife, Otilia in a mountainside town of San José. Ismael we soon learn is a voyeur. He can’t resist oggling the girls even though he is now in his seventies. Every morning he climbs a tree in his garden to pick oranges just so he can spy on his neighbor’s wife when she sunbathes naked.  But behind the tranquility there is the ever present threat of ‘disappearance’ and death as police, drug-traffickers, paramilitaries and guerrillas battle for supremacy in the hills. As chaos engulfs the town, Otilia goes missing and as Ismael roams the streets looking for her, his mental stability begins to teeter.  I chose this book as part of my Reading Along the Equator Challenge and so far it’s turning out to be a great read.