Author Archive: Lesley Jakobsen
Perfume (by Patrick Suskind)
The Ointment....
I awaited “The Queen of the Night” impatiently, having read promising advance notices. I pre-ordered it, compared time zones (Adelaide/Seattle) days ahead and then synched my Kindle repeatedly until Alexander Chee’s novel downloaded. And…it’s rubbish. I avoided “Perfume” by Patrick Suskind for years, having decided that it was populist rubbish. I reluctantly opened it with a sneer after it had been praised on the ABC TV Bookshow. And… it’s very good. This I call my “The Crimson Petal and the White” snob-humiliation. We all know the story; Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s unfortunate mother (who had “almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and – except for…
Continue Reading →The Queen of the Night (Alexander Chee)
Even Ivan (a character in Chee's Queen of the Night) is vapid and bored
“I was inside my lover’s opera, I knew, very near the ending. If the curse was true, and it did seem to rise up around me, as if it would become the very ship that would take me back to America, then I would sing for Aristafeo at least once more, somehow, before losing my voice forever – perhaps regaining my soul if it had ever really been lost. His opera and its fate for me even protecting what had been true so far of us, may be true once again: Aristafeo delivered to me, his steps away from me…
Continue Reading →Long Boho Crochet Vest
I wanted to use my lovely Noro yarn. I wanted to make this vest. It is in Cleckheaton No 934, “outrageous crochet” by Penny O’Neill. So… I put the two together. Here is the front. This is the back. Here”s a hint – I found it useful to cut out cardboard circles in the three sizes and measure my medallions against them as I went. Much easier than getting the tapemeasure out all the time. When I had finished the main part (see that blue line?) I jut kept going I want it to be long enough to…
Continue Reading →The First Monday in May
Let Mrs Pratt be a warning to you, Ms Wintour.
(dir. Andrew Rossi) TVC attended a premiere of this film which officially opens on May 12. Vogue editor, the infamous Anna Wintour (time to lose the bob, Anna) and Andrew Bolton (director of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) plan The Met’s most-attended fashion exhibition – “China: Through the Looking Glass” and the astounding opening party. Is fashion art? On a par with “The September Issue” and “Dior and I“. Fascinating for fashionistas. Not for anyone else. MINORITY REPORT BY Peter I respectfully agree: this was rather fascinating, albeit a little too long, with some repetition. What…
Continue Reading →Skylark (by Dezso Kostolanyi)
Tarot Major Arcana card, "The Moon".
This novel is said to be the story of Akos Vajkay and his wife Antonia during a week spent without their daughter Skylark, who is visiting family in the country. But it is the story of the whole town, Sarszeg, a dot on the map in the Austro-Hungarian empire on the brink of the twentieth century. Sarszeg is a musty and provincial town with only one tarmacked street, no electric light in the theatre, two stone-masons, two iron-mongers and, tellingly, three coffin makers. Cirrhosis of the liver is a big killer in Sarszeg. After an all-night session of the Panthers’ Table, a man’s drinking club, their leader, ” had so much…
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