Sadly, when it comes to ... such borderline theories, I have no spiel to offer, and sometimes revert to being a jerk. In this case, I suggested that they both might be magnetized. As an experiment, I said, he and his wife should float on their backs in their swimming pool to see if they both pointed north. I was guessing that they had a pool. I was right. They never came back. [p. 102]

There are some fascinating case studies here (ovarian teratoma, motor neurone disease, Parkinson's) and Ropper stresses the importance of listening to the patient's account of their problem, as well as observing the physical signs of it. Unfortunately Ropper presents as rather arrogant( Read more... )

You couldn’t get hot for handwriting. And yet he had ... [loc. 1329]

Set in London in 1924. Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler, of the Metropolitan Police, is approached by his slimy cousin Paul to sort out a graphologist who's wrecked Paul's engagement by accurately reporting, to his fiancee, his infidelity. Fowler drops in on the graphologist, one Joel Wildsmith, expecting to find a con artist of some variety: but he's disturbed, and impressed, by the accuracy of Joel's analyses. (And by Joel himself: but Aaron never acts on his desires, times being what they are.) He devises a scientific test, presenting Joel with a set of handwriting samples -- and Joel's gift reveals a sociopath.

The fire leaped high; it shone down the long stone-lined cutting into the mound, showing the painted doorposts of the burial vault, the new bronze hasps of the open doors, and the Erechthid snake upon the lintel. But it did not pierce the dark beyond; sometimes when my back was turned I could feel him standing in the shadows beyond the doorway to watch his rites, as they show dead men in the funeral pictures. [loc. 336]

Sequel to The King Must Die: I think as a teenager I read this first, an old paperback from the jumble sale. Narrated again by Theseus, it's the story of everything that happens after his return from Crete: his father's funeral, becoming king, his friendship with Pirithoos the Lapith (a Bad Influence, to be honest), his relationship with the Amazon Hippolyta, their son Hippolytus and Theseus' frustration with his chosen life... There are curiously primitive Kentaurs, an encounter with Oedipus, and a foreshadowing of Paris's Judgment: also a fleeting encounter with a young Achilles. And through it all, warp and weft, Theseus's sense of the gods: his religious and spiritual practices. 

‘Listen, and do not forget, and I will show you a mystery. It is not the sacrifice, whether it comes in youth or age, or the god remits it; it is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting, Theseus. The readiness is all.' [p. 17]

Definitely a reread, and I can remember when and where I first read it: in the library during study period in my third year at secondary school. I also remembered encountering the quotations from this novel in the chapter-headings of Watership Down, my favourite book when I was nine or ten years old... I remembered most of the details of The King Must Die, despite not having reread in the last couple of decades: I had forgotten (or never noticed) just how many hints of other myths -- Orpheus, an anachronistic Agamemnon, Jason -- are present, and how much they are woven into the theme of goddess-worship.

‘All those great men. When Alexander was alive, they pulled together like one chariot-team. And when he died, they bolted like chariot-horses when the driver falls. And broke their backs like horses, too.' [p. 308]

At times heartbreaking, and at others profoundly unpleasant, this is the story of how Alexander's empire fragmented after his death. There are a lot of strong and deadly women in this novel( Read more... )