Movie Review: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
Review by Gerti

In sharp contrast to the movie "A Month by the Lake" which I recently reviewed is "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain." It is everything the former movie wanted to be but wasn't. Both movies have breathtaking scenery, a nostalgic setting, and big name actors in the lead role. But "Mountain" (shall we call it) has a wit and charm that "Lake" is sadly lacking.

Heartthrob actor Hugh Grant starts as the eponymous Englishman, sent on a geological survey of Wales' largest (and allegedly first) mountain. He is only the assistant to the master measurer, played perfectly by British character actor Ian McNeice, but as that gentleman is often drunk and invariably surly, it is Grant with whom the locals interact. The cartographers arrive on Sunday when the town residents are at prayer, save for randy local innkeeper, nicknamed "Morgan the Goat" more for his sexual habits than for his looks. He is played by Colm Meaney, known to sci-fi fans as Chief O'Brien in several "Star Trek" series. Meaney is currently starring in the cable series "Hell on Wheels," but I have found him unwatchable in that how. Yet her, his ribald charm oozes off the screen. He obviously enjoyed himself playing a Welsh lothario!

His inn is the social center of the small town, Ffynnon Garw, and the men come by to place bets on the height of their mountain. Welsh geography is inextricably linked with its national mythology, and the locals are very proud of this mountain, (actually Garth's Hill!) But trouble starts when the initial survey determines it to be about 20 feet below 1000, too short to accurately be called a "mountain" by the map makers. This information galvanizes the town, including "the Goat" and Reverend Jones, the local pastor, who determines that enough has already been taken from the during WWI, and their hill must be a mountain, no matter what. A local lad sent back home shell-shocked, reveals how they used to dig trenches, and her reasons that building up the mountain is also possible - just that process in reverse. It is heart-warming to see the whole town, from elderly villagers to young children taken out of school, pitch in with buckets and wheelbarrows of dirt, all in an attempt to save their mountain and their pride.

To incent the Brits to stay a few days longer, "the Goat" has one of his lovely girlfriends from the big city of Cardiff visit the inn to charm the surveyors. While the older Brit is her intended target, Miss Elizabeth, or "Betty" as she's called, can't help by be charmed by the much younger and better-looking Hugh Grant. "The Goat" must resort to the dirty trick of disabling their car to keep the Brits in town long enough for the locals to build a mound atop their hill. There is more trouble, a monsoon quality rainstorm, and tragedy, the pastor dies on the hill, but ingenuity and heart win out. The hill becomes a mountain again, and Hugh Grant gets the girl. What a charming romantic romp! Great writing and great to look at.

Conquistadora

Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago
Adult Fiction

Review by Mary Ellen


A novel about the Spanish Conquistadors conquering Puerto Rico. A Spanish author, Esmeralda read Ana Larrago's diaries from 1844. Diaries from a Spanish lady who traveled with two conquistadors.

They traveled across the ocean with the explorer Ponce de Leon. Ana married one of the conquistadors at eighteen years old. She and her husband lived on a sugar plantation in Puerto Rico during Spanish Rule. There was a revolt. Ana did not want to give up her plantation. Life was not peaceful for Ana when she fell in love with another man.

Weasels by Elys Dolan

Picture Book
Age Range: 5-8
Grade Level: K-3

Submitted by Tina

The little animals did not eat frogs, rabbits, and mice, but used computers to dominate the earth.  It is silly and funny, for children aged 5 and up.  The author is a very creative storyteller.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Reading Level: Adult Fiction
Submitted by Gerti

When you choose a novel that’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, you know you’ve got a good one, and even though this is a very old work (1927) by a very old author (1897-1975), I was hooked from the opening line. “On Friday noon, July the 20^th, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated 5 travelers into the gulf below.” The book lives up to its hype, and is a truly great effort from the author.

Thornton Wilder’s novel takes that simple “fact” (it is actually fiction), and weaves it into a fascinating look at the lives of the people who died in that event, as researched and pulled together by a local monk who was trying to use their deaths to illustrate that God punishes the wicked. But what the story actually shows (and why the original copy of Brother Juniper’s work is destroyed by the church) is that their lives are not evil at all, but that the lives are ended for no fathomable reason. Young, old, good, evil, loving and innocent, the 5 people who died are not the worst in all Peru, and that is a mind-blowing concept to Brother Juniper, who so desperately looked for a divine plan to human life and death.

The 5 people are thoroughly fleshed-out characters, brilliantly drawn by Wilder. The first biography is of the Marquesa de Montemayor, who is not only a gifted writer, but a woman who loves her only child (a daughter) with an open, generous heart, even though that child never returns her affection, and in fact seems to go out of her way to plague and annoy her. Luckily, the daughter is married to a man (in faraway Spain) who appreciates the old lady, and saves the beautiful letters the Marquesa writes to his wife, letters which turn into classics of Spanish literature. The Marquesa dies accompanied by her servant and companion, Pepita, who was raised in a convent and has been given to the Marquesa so that the Mother Superior can prepare her to take over the many good works affiliated with their order. Pepita’s death shows the aged Mother Superior that despite her vain belief that the church hospital and school are important, God does not care if those good works continue after her death.

Also killed in that accident is Esteban, brother to another orphan dropped off at the Convent of Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas. The twin boys grow up with their own secret language, and are very close to one another, until the one named Manuel falls in love with a local actress. This love pulls the brothers apart, as Manuel won’t confess his love to the woman, as he can’t imagine his brother living without him. Manuel then becomes very ill and dies, and Esteban is forced to live without him anyway. But his life has lost its meaning, and he tries suicide. A famous ship captain tries to interest him in life and the world again and he is on the journey to join that ship when God takes his life by having him fall off the bridge. Ironically, the man who trained the actress his brother was in love with also dies in the bridge accident, along with the young actress’s sickly son.

Wicked Bugs – The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army & Other Diabolical Insects by Amy Stewart

Reading Level: Teen Non-Fiction
Submitted by Gerti

This is the 2^nd book of Amy Stewart’s that I have finished reading, starting with “Wicked Plants” and here reading her “Wicked Bugs.” I don’t know which she wrote first, but they are very similar in design and execution, although I must admit I like “Wicked Bugs” better. I am still working on a third book of hers, “The Drunken Botanist”, but I haven’t managed to finish it yet. It isn’t nearly as interesting as these other two if you don’t plan to brew your own moonshine!

Like “Wicked Plants”, “Wicked Bugs” is full of strange and unusual facts about insects, arachnids and other creepy crawlies (like scorpions). Like her other book, the creatures descriptions are arranged alphabetically for ease of use, and there is a tab on the upper right corner of the page that indicates whether it fits various categories, like “deadly” or “painful.” While for the plants, I was upset that there were no actual full-color pictures of the plants to help humans avoid them, here I don’t mind the sepia-toned drawings of the insects, etc., mainly because so few of them reside in the US!

Unlike “Wicked Plants,” the drawings in this book don’t bother me, mainly because they are of the creepie crawlie in question, and not of some bizarre nightmare or a psychedelic state the bug bite might cause. It was actually fun showing my kids the pictures of the various bugs, some of which appear to show the creatures actual size, which is pretty creepy when they are 5 inches or larger! I don’t know whether the pictures accurately represent their actual size, only that the size of the drawing of a particular bug seems to mimic the size range the author mentions. Actual entomologists might quibble about it, but I don’t care that much! I’m really just counting eyes and legs when I look at bugs!

Is it worth reading? Yes, like “Wicked Plants”, “Wicked Bugs” is probably even worth purchasing for the home library, since it talks about how dangerous various critters can be. I would especially buy it if I were planning to head to South America or Africa or some other site where the bigger, deadlier things lurk. Fortunately, here in the United States, it seems all I have to watch out for are eating raw pork (she does include a section on parasites) and getting bitten by a brown recluse. Still, this book makes me glad that I spend most of my time indoors!

The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Reading Level: Juvenile Fiction
Submitted by Gerti

This book was recommended to me by the mother of another teenaged boy, and I read it, thinking it might be something my son could read with interest, since he’s not a big fan of mathematics. I’m not a big fan either, but I must say, this book taught me a thing or two, and one of those is not to trust everything you read!

I won’t call this a good book, but “The Number Devil” is a book full of strange and unusual facts about numbers and math. I enjoyed the drawings and the various exercises and games the author included. But some of the book just seems to be a weird translation of a European text. Since Hans Enzensberger lives in Germany, I assume it was originally written by him in German, and there are some times I wish I could have read it in the original, because the translation just seems so awkward! I wonder if the person who translated it from German to English was a native English speaker, or just someone who studied English in school! It seems like the latter was the case.

That criticism aside, I fully related to the story of Robert, the elementary school student who doesn’t like math (or his math teacher – the humorously portrayed Mr. Bockel). I like the book’s format, where each new topic in math is taught in the guise of a dream, and each chapter is called by the night Robert dreams about that mathematical concept. What I like least about the book is that until the end, I as the reader didn’t realize that the terms I was learning (like Bonacci numbers, for example) were made up. Bonacci numbers are actually Fibonacci numbers, and the difference in terms to me is slight, so I don’t understand why the author couldn’t just have used the real terms if his intention was really to teach people about math. It bums me out that a math hater like myself actually went to the trouble of trying to learn some of these mathematical terms, only to find out that the words the author used for them was wrong. It’s a bit of a cruel trick.

So, is this book worth reading? Yes, probably more for a math teacher (who knows what the real terms are and would find their approximations amusing). As for me, I would prefer another person to translate this story from the original text, and for that translator to use the actual terms and names for famous mathematicians instead of using the clever (but inaccurate) substitutions the author makes. It’s not an easy read for an English major, and finding out at the end (where the glossary of “real” terms and names resides) that I have been deceived is the literary equivalent of sitting in the corner with a dunce hat on. It makes me appreciate that math is practical and its many tricks were discovered by clever people throughout history, but it makes me dislike this author who was more clever than practical if he was really trying to give his readers a math lesson. I think it’s the author who’s the devil in this work.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Reading Level: Adult
Submitted by Gerti

“Stardust” is the third book by Neil Gaiman that I have recently read, and it bears a strong resemblance to the last book “Neverwhere” – as it also involves a world that is different from that in which we humans normally live. The book begins in the small British village of Wall, which necessarily has an enormous wall on one side of it, through which there is a passage with guards from the town stationed on either side of it. On the other side of this opening, one can see a meadow, and some trees in the distance, but the guards are ordered to keep residents and visitors to Wall from passing through it, due to the magical nature of what exists over there. However, once every 9 years, there a market in the meadow, and residents of town and beyond get together to meet and trade goods.

Teeing up the fairy tale, for that is what the story becomes, is Dunstan Thorn, a Wall resident who like every young man of a certain age is in love with a local girl. It is time for the market, however, and he goes through the gap in order to find a lovely little trinket for his sweetheart. Instead, he finds an old witch who owns a stand offering beautiful glass flowers which make an unearthly music. The old woman’s servant is a lovely young girl who is chained to the stand, but Dunstan still manages to buy a flower from her. However, when the girl kisses him he becomes enchanted, and returns to the fair late at night to make love to the slave girl. After the market, life goes back to normal in Wall, until a small baby appears on the village side of the gap one night. A name tag attached to him calls the baby Tristan Thorn, and Dunstan and his beloved village girl (who have gotten married by this point and had a baby of their own) take the child in.

Years pass, and Tristan falls in love with another gorgeous village girl, and promises to do anything if she’ll only kiss him. When the pair see a falling star, she asks him to get it for her, and he has to pass from the village into the meadow to do so. Then his adventures really begin, for he discovers that the fallen star is actually a living creature in fairy land, and that although he also has a chain to bind her, he let’s her go of his own free will. She runs away, but a tree tells him he must save her, for a pack of witches needs the star’s heart in order to bring back their youth. Fortunately, Tristan is such a good-natured creature, that everything in the forest is willing to help him, whether unicorn or dwarf, and he is able to save the star (whose name is Yvain) from imminent death. Of course, they fall in love, and the story has a few more twists and mysteries before Tristan can become the king he is destined to be with Yvain by his side. There is a secondary plot involving seven murderous uncles of his who also want to rule, but things turned out in the best possible way, as they do in any good fairy tale.

I love Gaiman’s imagination, and his sense of morality, which comes through loud and clear in this book, as the good guys always win, and even the bad guys often undergo a change of heart. A lovely story for a snowy afternoon.