Book Reviews

Book Review Butterfly Brain by Barry Cryer

We know Barry Cryer is good at writing jokes and appearing on stage as a comedian because he tells us throughout his autobiography Butterfly Brain. Self-praise aside the 199 pages are good value for one liners, jokes, anecdotes and funny stories with more than one a page. We also learn some of the less funnier side of the laughter business such as Tommy Cooper’s sulks and sadistic enjoyment of humiliating fans, of Peter Sellers rejecting scripts only to accept the first he’d said no to on the advice of his astrologer and of Peter Cook’s jealousy of Dudley Moore due to Dud’s success in movies. And Barry also admits to a time when he couldn’t take a joke at his local pub when he railed against pub bores who criticised his TV work.

But the book is not just a who’s who of the comedy world but a volume packed with some excellent stories. There are some thoughtful and insightful tributes to the likes of Linda Smith, Kenny Everett, Eric Morecambe, Willie Rushton and Bill Cotton. And he pays tribute to his wife ‘Terry’ (the singer and dancer Theresa Donovan) and is open about his dislike of Jeffrey Archer who refused to admit he knew Barry despite having pinched some of his gags for an after dinner speech. He was born in Leeds and after school studied English Literature at university but after a year dropped out and managed to get work as a stand-up in London before eventually being spotted by David Frost. The rest is history as he made the most of the early career break going on to write for all the greats of TV comedy in the 1960s and 1970s before returning to stand-up as an after-dinner speaker.

Butterfly Brain is a highly entertaining read as every page has some revelation, or gossip or a joke – usually told by one of Barry’s friends – he appeared to be friends with everyone in show business. From Andrew Sachs to Humphrey Littleton and from Ronnie Corbett to Alexie Sayle – who once remarked about Bernard Manning, ‘He’s a good comic with a lamentable act.’

For his own performance over the years Barry said he started as a stand-up, became a writer and ended up as a stand-up. Not a bad career for student drop-out in the 1950s.

Harry Mottram

Barry Cryer was born in Leeds in 1935 and died in 2022 at the age of 86 and for many like me is best known for appearing on BBC Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Butterfly Brain was published in 2009 and is available from all good book shops and online.

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Rapscallion Magazine Book Review: Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliantly clear and simple prose brings to life artificial humanoid Klara in a futuristic world of genetically enhanced children

 Apr 26, 2025

Book Review: Klara And The Sun.

Some of the reviews of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun speak of love and of the meaning of love when the story is more a testament to human selfishness and the opposite of love. Yes, love with the two teenagers Rick and Josie who Klara connects with but as an artificial humanoid she is treated like any piece of household equipment and can be discarded when not needed. However, Klara recognises love and friendship in the humans she serves or observes during her life in the showroom and later as Josie’s Artificial Friend or AF. Written in the first person by Klara the story is set in a future where children are routinely genetically enhanced or ‘lifted’, so as to increase their intelligence and better prospects of gaining a college place and a good career. Some like Josie have health problems as a result and that’s where the AFs come in as a means of support as a friend and general helper. Klara like all AFs is programmed to fulfil this role but unlike the more superior AF B3s she develops a greater sense of empathy and understanding of human emotions making her special.

Like some of the protagonists in Kazuo Ishiguro’s other novels Klara is in some ways an unreliable narrator as she tells her story from only her point of view. She is programmed to serve and as such is compliant to her controllers – the store’s manager and later Josie and her mother – but develops her own opinions of the various characters and her near religious believe in the healing power of the sun. This is in part due to her reliance on solar power to keep her active but also in her misunderstanding of how the universe works which the humans fail to explain to her.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliantly clear and simple prose brings to life artificial humanoid Klara in a futuristic world of genetically enhanced children although apart from these innovations the people and their surroundings sound the same as ever – selfish and materialist. Apart from The Father who seemed to think violence and civil war was likely the ordinary day to day lives of the shoppers, the farmers and the road workers with their Cootings Machine and the office staff in the RPO Building seem no different from today.

Although a very straightforward and easy to read novel there is a continual doubt as to where the story is going as we discover Josie’s family has a tragic past. Would Klara intervene in the lives of Josie, the Mother, Rick and Rick’s mother more or would the eccentric Mr Capaldi and his sculpture of Josie somehow become a threat. And then there was Mother’s ex-boyfriend the very unhelpful Mr Vance and his bitterness at their breakup and the interfering and argumentative Josie’s dad. The concerns they all had and their bickering and arguments about what was best for Rick and Josie contrasted with the two teenagers who seemed the only mature and balanced characters.

As the novel reaches its final chapters the debates about Josie’s future and that of Rick become increasingly intense and Klara observes these often-heated discussions which as an AF brings a certain calmness in her observations. She is not entirely neutral – only wanting the best for Josie but is only sometimes brought into the conversations – and is frequently left standing by the refrigerator. How would it all end? The setting sun in Mr Bain’s barn, the importance of the Cootings Machine or Josie’s illness finally getting the better of her? Or even the horrifying prospect of cloning Rosie?

Fortunately, the down to earth Melania Housekeeper and her concerns of the teenagers engaging in ‘hanky-panky’ and their witty and funny conversations keep the situations grounded in the everyday. Their love for each other is a central theme – in all its awkward teenage mood swings – but a love recognised by Klara as important and often missed by the grown-ups. Rick’s mother’s character Miss Helen is superbly drawn in the hilarious scene in the Sushi Restaurant when she’s rebuffed by Mr Vance to Rick’s embarrassment. And Melania Housekeeper’s warning to Klara to keep an eye on Josie at Mr Capaldi’s studio or she’d dump her in the trash can bring more humour to Klara’s dead-pan narration.

It’s not really a dystopian novel in the sense the world has been plunged into a dark and dangerous future but more of a warning of how AFs could intervene in our world and the downside of genetically interfering with children and how the wealthy would use these changes to their advantage – or disadvantage. The technology behind all of this is not explained as it is Klara who interprets society through the limits of her programmed brain. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun is a page turner, an easy to read, compulsive novel – containing many unexplained events and characters due to Klara’s lack of knowledge of people – and those mysteries slowly unravel even when Klara gets things wrong. And happily, gets them right – including her devotion to the unlikely powers of the sun.

Harry Mottram

Notes

This novel was chosen as the latest book for The Axbridge Four Seasons Book Club founded in 1998. If you are interested in joining email harryfmottram@gmail or message me via social media. The Club has its own FaceBook site.

It’s the second novel of Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro that we have read – and most of his novels are about memories and looking back at the past as in Remains of the Day while I thought there were parallels with his novel Never Let Me Go. As a club we met the novelist in Bath when he gave a talk – although Japanese by birth he has lived in England since the age of two and doesn’t speak Japanese.

Klara and the Sun was published on 2 March 2021 by Faber and Faber – my copy came from Cheddar Library – a £1.50 fee – but it is widely available from all good book shops.

A movie version of the novel is in production with Jenna Ortega cast as Klara – the main image is from a promo for the film; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNgdXFupbjI

Currently on BBC i-player there is a profile of Kazuo Ishiguro at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tqn0/imagine-2021-kazuo-ishiguro-remembering-and-forgetting

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Rapscallion Magazine Book Review: The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir

Book Review: The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir

Do you believe in God? The question is one of the themes of Simone de Beauvoir’s novella The Inseparables, as its two main characters wrestle with this question in their strict Roman Catholic families in early 20^th century France.

Sylvie makes friends with the waif like but intelligent and mature Andrée at school. The story follows their friendship through school and college as they grow into mature young women as their conversations turn to love and marriage. Stifling parental control, self-harm, youthful rebelliousness, the overbearing influence of the church and its priests, sexism and what is expected of young women and a window into the everyday life in both rural France and in Paris all feature in the novella.

The God question though is where the two girls part ways with Sylvie preferring to think for herself and to expand her horizons and Andrée choosing to remain devout and obedient despite continuing to question her faith and parents and wishing to stay home with Pascal rather than attend university in England. The discussions the two girls have about God, religion and faith echo those I had when attending a convent school from the ages of 5 to 10, where the Catholic faith took the form of an indoctrination. The numerous prayers and sermons, the Friday morning church service – in which as a non-Catholic I had to sit at the back – and the nuns who were also the teachers who drummed into us the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Stella Maris Convent School in Seaton was a private school – and I only attended free as my mother was a PE teacher for the upper school. When the job ended, I was moved to the state primary school up the road which was so much better.

At home and out of school I could escape the constant propaganda – but not Andrée whose mother never lets up with trying to control her mind and behaviour. It seems that the main religious disciplinarian are not the priests but Madame Gallard who kept Andrée busy in order to prevent her from experiencing any unwanted influences. Written in the first person the novel is a semi-autobiographical account of Simone de Beauvoir’s friendship with Elisabeth Lacoin, better known as Zaza and as such considering how the two stories mirror each other feels more real and also more poignant.

When they first meet there is the stunning opening line from Andrée: “I’m nine. If I look younger, it’s because I got burned alive and didn’t grow much after that.” And despite missing a year of schooling Andrée very quickly moves to the top of the class with the help of Sylvie as they become friends. Or do they? As Andrée seems unaware for a long time that Sylvie loves her since she is so wrapped up in her own life.

And Sylvie’s faith is shaken when Abbé Dominique takes her confession and says, “I have been told that my little Sylvie is not the same girl she was… she has become distracted, disobedient and insolent.’ Following that when a man exposes himself to her, she becomes even more disillusioned with the church and God.

My own disillusionment with the idea of a supernatural all-powerful God began when I visited Cheddar Caves as a child and saw the skeleton of a Neanderthal man who had no chance of becoming a Christian and concluded with my first biology lesson at senior school which was on Darwin and evolution. School was a constant purveyor of the Christian faith but by our teenage years it was generally dismissed by all of my friends. My parents were split as my Church going mother said we must believe ‘like a child’ which to me was very was unconvincing, while my father saw religion as ‘a lot of old rope.’ Now, I have no faith in any religion, but I do have a certain affection for Christian music, churches, biblical texts, buildings and services – and in particular some of the social codes of Christianity such as the Good Samaritan. Like Sylvie in this coming-of-age story, my faith was chipped away, until it evaporated.

Harry Mottram

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Book Review: Francois Sagan’s Bonjour Tritesse (Hello Sadness) and Un certain sourire (A Certain Smile), Penguin edition.

By Harry Mottram: She pulled up sharply in her Citroen with squeal of tyres and a surly look on her face. Clive James opened the car door and greeted the grumpy driver Francois Sagan. In a moment they were off racing erratically through the streets of Paris as Clive attempted to interview the former novelist. He looked disappointed with the ill tempered middle aged woman whose fame had been based on her ability to pen passionate stories of love and lust in 1950s France. Such are the cruelties of age. It was one of Clive James’ BBC documentaries in his Post Card from series with one of the first screened in 1989 from Paris shown on BBC i-player as well. He quizzed her on her driving and car accidents and there was a comical moment where she appeared to clip another motorist. Her novel Bonjour Tristesse was mentioned and her subsequent fame due to becoming a highly successful author at just 18 years of age when Bonjour Tristesse was published in 1954. The story of a spoilt girl who is jealous of her father’s girlfriends while on a holiday in the South of France was to be followed by a string of novels, screenplays, songs, short stories, autobiographies, plays, films and even a ballet right up until six years before her death in 2004 aged 69. That glimpse of the Gallic literary genius (and it has to be said bad girl of Paris with her fast and dangerous driving, tax fraud case, cocaine and drug addiction and serious car crash which left her in a coma) did awaken me to her work and in particular Bonjour Tristesse which in the Penguin edition includes the novella Un certain sourire.

Review of Francois Sagan’s Bonjour Tritesse (Hello Sadness)

Sun, sex and selfish Cécile. Or it could read sun, sex and regrets. Francois Sagan’s Bonjour Tritesse was a smash hit when it was published in 1958 in France and a year later in the UK – despite some picky bits of sensorship for the no sex please we’re British readership. Why is the question – well there’s two reasons. Firstly in post war France it was one of the first teenage novels that took feelings, passion and sex seriously which was so refreshing in the Catholic nation still recovering from four years of Nazi occupation. And the second reason is its gripping narrative, brevity and the candid nature of the narrator.

Cécile, 17, has daddy complex. Her mother died when she was two and her father is her idol and friend. He’s a player with girl friends, a shallow but full-on social life and laid back attitude to education meaning Cécile doesn’t have to complete her studies and can bum around all summer at their holiday home in the south of France. It may be an easy upbringing in one sense but she is not keen on her dad’s girl friends – in particular Elsa – his latest squeeze who is ‘very sweet, rather dim, and quite unpretentious.’ When they arrive at the place by the sea set back amongst a pine forest Elsa was not the golden skinned mistress but peeled and went red in the sun while Cécile soaked up the sun spending time in the sea and hitting it off with Cyril who was on vacation near by. If the arrival of Elsa was bad enough then hock horror Anne turned up on Raymond (Cécile’s dad) invitation and quickly took over proceedings by ordering Cécile to study and finish with Cyril.

There is something compulsive about novels written in the first person as we only see the world through their eyes and thoughts and in Cécile we see how immature, selfish and manipulative she can be. In Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita we know that Humbert is evil as he plots to have sex with Dolores but somehow due to the way it is written we follow his every move because he reasons everything he does as justification for its core immorality. And in Cécile we fall into the same trap in trusting the unreliable narrator as in JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Amy Dunne in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Cécile is clever as she manipulates a situation involving the side-lined Elsa and her boyfriend Cyril (now through her they are briefly an item) as well as her father who she manages get back with Elsa in order to shock and frighten off Anne. She doesn’t explicitly tell these couples to have sex but without any words ensures they briefly hit it off in a way that Anne will know. And it works as the fall-out is dramatic, tragic and shocking. Her justification, her planning and the way she explains it to herself to ensure she is free of blame is so true – as we have all done things we regret but manage by going through events in our mind convince ourselves we are innocent.

Book Review: Francois Sagan’s Un certain sourire (A Certain Smile), Penguin edition.

In her second novel written in 1955, Francois Sagan’s Un certain sourire the unreliable narrator Dominique is student who is in love with an older man Luc. She befriends Luc and his wife Françoise  and has an affair with him ensuring Françoise is left in the dark through lies and deceit. Dominique like Cécile is obsessive about making sure the various relationships in her life are manipulated to her advantage. She has a boyfriend in Bertand who she cheats on but justifies her two timing with Luc and his betrayal of Françoise. Like Cécile in Bonjour Tritesse the narrator is in love with a father figure who she wants to herself while also having affairs.

There is one big difference in Cécile is not in physical love with her dad – she just wants him for herself – but in Un certain sourire Dominique is in love with Luc and does everything she can to win him over. It’s just he’s not in love with her which leaves her twisting and turning in mental torment throughout the story. Her internal reasoning and her attempts to manipulate everyone is its strength but without the drama of the slow burning plot and shocking climax of in Bonjour Tritesse although a good read it lacks the page turning compulsion of Sagan’s first novel.

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