Reference to:
Charlotte Sometimes
A novel by Penelope Farmer
1969, Chatto & Windus
Also referenced in 'Charlotte Sometimes' and 'Splintered in Her Head'
&
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
A novel by George Orwell
1936, Available in the Penguin Classics series
Charlotte Sometimes, the novel
Spoiler alert - buy the book and read it before you read this if possible.
A young girl in a new boarding school sleeps in a an old bed and wakes up the next morning to find she is someone else in the same bed 40 years earlier. Vivid and strange imagery throughout with wonderful prose beautifully chosen by Robert Smith to create a complete experience.
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‘The Empty World’
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Reference to title p115:
"...she felt...almost exhilarated by this empty world."
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p144
‘stiff as toys and tall as men’
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“She dreamed she heard a drum beating, and never knew afterwards whether this was a dream or real. Thrum, thrum, thrum it went reaching into all parts of her head. It might have even come from inside her head...”
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the Novel
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The main character is a middling poet.
Throughout the novel he pieces together a new poem
Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over
The bending poplars, newly bare,
And the dark ribbons of the chimneys
Veer downward; flicked by whips of air
Torn posters flutter.
The evocative phrase ‘wind-torn trees’ from the elements above is what he should have arrived at if he were as much of a poet as Robert ‘word’Smith.
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The Empty World, the song
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Stiff as toys and tall as men
And swaying like the wind torn trees
She talked about the empty world
With eyes like poisoned birds
She talked about the armies
That marched inside her head
And how they made her dreams go bad
But, oh, how happy she was, how proud she was
To be fighting in the war
In the empty world
Stiff as toys and tall as men
Swaying like the wind torn trees
She talked about the empty world
With eyes like poisoned birds
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Lyrics Robert Smith