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BOOK REVIEW : Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

The only woman to have won the Man Booker Prize twice in a row, Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies deserved to win. Despite the novel being set in Henry VIIIs Tudor England much about the novel has huge relevance to life today with political scandals and major figures falling from grace because of a woman’s wrath, only instead of damming emails we have messengers despatched via secret passages and every nuance that could mean something, anything is carefully recorded in Cromwell’s computer like mind. Mantel’s keen observations of how Ann Boleyn captures the attention of her next victim and makes him believe he is the only man in the room are brilliant. The Faux French Queen’s pearls in her necklace are likened to little beads of fat around her neck and her nails are described as tiny knives. She describes Anne’s anger as scissored up sewing, broken glass and her presence as ‘barbed’ so her ladies avoid getting too near.

The second guessing of what everyone else is thinking and how to avoid falling out of Henry’s favour provide much of the substance of the book and Mantel’s Cromwell or Crmuell is shown as master manipulator who manages at least in this book to keep his head. She has been persuaded to write a third book to complete this dazzling trilogy and I have no doubt it will be as sharp and thrilling as Bring Up the Bodies, Bring on the next book…

I read it with a pencil so I could mark the many insightful and clever descriptions Mantel deployed to transport us to this dark but compelling world.  A no brainer Christmas present for anyone who takes their reading seriously and fabulous for bits to read aloud to inspire the younger members of the family to write like this.

Let me know what you thought of Bring Up the Bodies in the comment box below and thanks for liking and sharing on Facebook. Monica.

Older books on my library shelf are here, click on the jackets to find out more and easily order here direct from Amazon , done.

OTHER BRILLIANT BOOKS ON MY LIBRARY SHELF

  

      

 

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TEENAGERS IN DUBAI

Bringing up teenagers in any city in the world has it’s trials and tribulations but for a huge expat community being a parent of a teenager suddenly means a whole new set of responsibilities. And while our children were little, no one will deny that having a maid to help out with the domestic drudgery meant we had more time to explore stimulating classes and play sessions but no amount of staff (well maybe a driver would help!) can provide respite from the often fraught path of teenage life.

Many of us have spent part of our summers back in our home countries where often teenagers can dress differently, behave differently, speak differently and importantly the repercussions of their behavior are dealt with differently by the authorities than they are here. That’s not to say one system is better than the other, there are problems everywhere but this is where we live so we need to work within the confines of the norms here.

We as parents have to carefully balance a teenager’s natural desire to carve out an identity for themselves and all that brings with it  with social pressures, peer pressures and study pressures in the context of the country we live in without it feeling like a constant battle ground for all concerned.

Well that’s easier said than done, does your teenager go to all the parties/gatherings they’ve been invited to? Do you pick them up at the door or allow them to come home in a taxi with a friend ? What is a reasonable time for a 17 year old to be expected home ? What is a reasonable amount of revision to do before a test or exam ? Are sleepovers ok during term time or should they be saved for holidays ? Do you ban blackberries at mealtimes at least ? Do you really think they MUST have an ipad/iphone as schools are using more and more technology? Is the only option to have a laptop in their bedrooms? Should you  pull the plug out of the internet at night ?  I really don’t know !

These types of issues will be addressed in a talk that’s happening on the 15th of October in Dubai. Carole Spiers, a renowned motivational speaker who has 3 children of her own and works in the UK and the UAE is leading a talk/workshop called NEGOTIATING THE TEENAGE TUNNEL and this talk is aimed at parents of any teenagers based here in the UAE. For Dhs 100 a ticket it’ll be money well spent and maybe mark the beginning of a series of talks that will provide some much needed guidance and practical support for parents.

Click here for how you can come to this talk.

Let me know if you think this type of workshop is a good idea and also send me in your key concerns surrounding your teenager and DoinDubai will send them in to Carole Spiers who will try and incorporate some answers in her talk.

Thanks Monica. And as usual please like and share this post on facebook.

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GCSE VS IGCSE: Discuss….

 

Edexcel

Many private schools in the UK opt to do the IGCSE, the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, a 2 year course undertaken in most subjects with exams taken only at the end of two years, ie in the summer of Year 11.  So they are more like the older O’ level system. These exams are thought to be more academic by some people perhaps because a whole 2 years worth of work is examined at one go and individual sections cannot be resat to improve an overall grade.

GCSE’s (undertaken by many but not all British Curriculum schools in the UAE) are much more modular in the way they are taught and examined.  For example the Edexcel GCSE Science 360 exam covers Physics, Chemistry and Biology for the first year with multiple choice exams taken twice during the year. The final grade is an amalgamation of these scores and an average of internally assessed activities (IAA) marked at school. This IAA part of the exam is not simple to revise for. Each element of multiple choice may be resat once. A good level of vocabulary is essential for the multiple choice questions which some people think are often designed to catch out rather than show off knowledge.  I understand though that this exam will be scrapped in favour of more short answer question papers where students get credited for what they do know.

Additional science is undertaken at the end of Year 11 and again covers Physics, Chemistry and Biology, so at the end of 2 years, most students gain 2 science GCSE’s, Science and Additional Science. Some students are invited by their school to undertake a third science GCSE, Extension Science.  The IGCSE however would be 3 Individual science exams leading to 3 IGCSE’s Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Some schools do a mixture of both IGCSE and GCSE. It’s rare to be able to choose once you are in a school which route you want to take, this is pretty much set by the school.

The AQA English GCSE 4704 course is also modular in how it is taught and examined, with exam type assessments starting as early as October of year 10 for some routes. Schools can choose to teach English, English Language and English Literature side by side over the course of 2 years and may follow a range of different texts and aspects of English to study. It does feel however (at least from my experience) that the whole of year 10 is a constant exam year as far as English is concerned. Resists are not easy to do and impossible for some modules such as the long essays written over 4 mornings at school under exam conditions involving quite in depth analysis.

Apparently the UK Government has agreed to pay state schools (non fee paying) to do English IGCSE from this year despite the GCSE AQA 4704 exam being very new therefore many more schools will opt for the conventional 2 year course leading to a separate IGCSE for English Literature and Language.

Make sure you choose the right route for your child and familiarize yourself with the exam board for each examination, Edexcel, AQA and OCR seem to be the most popular.

Did you find this article helpful? Do you have any questions relating to this post ? Let me know by writing in the comment box below. Do leave your email address in the subscription box above to ensure you receive subsequent posts talking about the IB diploma vs A levels. Click here for the link between GCSE and IB

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RIOTS, RAIN AND RESULTS…..IN LONDON

Stealing a sofa, what next? The last 3 weeks in London featured Riots, Rain and GCSE Results, more or less in that order. Waiting at Dar Es Salaam airport to board a flight back to Dubai we were horrified to watch the protest at the police shooting of Mark Duggan, morph into full scale rioting and looting on the streets of initially London’s less affluent boroughs (Tottenham, Hackney) spreading quickly to  Clapham and even St John’s Wood. We went ahead with our London visit and arrived on the 12th of August, the first quiet day after the riots, the main talking points of our London pals went like this:

How could this happen? Well it happened because people felt they could get away with theft and were confident at being immune to punishment, the Police were powerless, at least at first. People were just bored, and wanted something to do. And isn’t everyone today judged much more on what they have possessions wise and not on who they are? Not all the looters were “poor” -What do you mean, poor? Many looters drove in cars they owned to retail parks and robbed random items and then drove home to flats and houses they owned and watched (possibly themselves looting) on the flatscreens plasmas they’d loaded into their hatchbacks.

Did you hear about the looter who tried on several pairs of shoes before selecting the right sizes and styles for her, and oh the looters in Clapham who even stole a sofa from a department store on the first floor and of course the fact that in one highstreet the only shop not touched was Waterstones (a major UK book chain) as there’s no resale value for books is there and looters don’t read do they ?

Some of the press are now criticising the harshness of the sentences handed down to some looters, 6 months for being found empty handed in an Argos store to 4 years for inciting people to riot via social networking sites, I wonder what sort of sentences would be meted out in the UAE for these crimes and what would be considered harsh here?

The other major domestic news was August’s GCSE results for students up and down the country. Apparently grade inflation seems to have come to an end, this means for the first time in 15 years the % of A and A*s didn’t go up. This is also the last year tuition fees stay at £3175, (AED 9000) per annum. Next September (2012) fees shoot up to £9000

(AED 54, 000) per annum for home students.  While there was an unprecedented scramble for places, many students and parents are thinking hard about the university route to a satisfying and well paid career. The increase in fees and the heightened competition at getting in not only to the university of your choice but then to secure a training position at a professional firm (think accountants and lawyers) has people questioning what to do for the best.

And the backdrop to most of this was rain ! Despite having many umbrellas at home, I’m still not clever about taking one out with me and so suffered the humiliation of getting wet and looking bedraggled rather than pay £7.00 (Dhs 30) for a very dodgy umbrella from a market stall in front of Selfridges, yes UniQlo has cheaper ones but is a fair walk and of course the cheapest one at Selfridges, one of my favourite stores, was £15.00. I wasn’t tempted to loot it but then my second favourite store is Waterstones.

Many Dubai residents visit the UK in the summer months, were you in London this summer, did the riots affect you? Let me know by writing a comment in the box below.  Next week’s post from London Calling talks about the shops that aren’t in any of Dubai’s malls and more analysis of the GCSE vs IGCSE exams, which ones are right for your child and do you have a choice at all ?

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