Harriet Said....

Oh, did you see her on the BBC4 documentary the other night? It was made by her grandson, Charlie, and is a film of her 71st year. She had convinced herself that she was going to die and so wanted some kind of final record of her writing her final book.

She is thin and wiry and I loved the way she stomped about - up and down the stairs, along streets. I can't wait to be 71. My beard is turning grey and it is great!!

Oh, and she smokes and drinks a lot. There is one scene where the camera is following her as she walks across a bookshop. She disappears from view as she tumbles to the floor.

"It's not the drink!" she says.

Take a bit of austerity years, a bit of demonic posh girl, a bit of older man's sadness and mix together with a summer holiday at home and you get 'Harriet Said'.

As the Neilson stuff above says it is evocative of A childhood, not childhood in general. The 'rundown seaside resort' hardly features.

It's actually a book about hero worshipping your best friend, the cruelty of teenage girls and the loneliness of middle-aged men.

The relationship between the narrator and Harriet calls to mind the relationship between the two girls in 'Heavenly Creatures', with similar results.

The book catches so well that teenage feeling of loving your friends so dearly that you will be led by them to do anything, while at the same time dreading seeing them and fearing what they'll do or say next.

The descriptions of post-war Britain in a summer time where sexual awakening meets teenage over-reaching fills the landscape with bloated dead things, rotting dogs on the beach, copses sinister with life, everything alive and over detailed, literally pulsing with unpleasant possibility.

I really enjoyed it.

Cheers,

Billy