Probably better as a film

I think the hardest thing for an author to get right is striking the balance between either giving the reader too little information or issues to explore, or too much: prescribing conclusions without leaving time or room to ponder. I can’t quite work out if Hideous Kinky suffers from a dearth of thought provoking material (i.e.- it’s dull), or is actually refreshingly free.

Let’s get this out of the way- Hideous kinky has no plot to speak of. It’s essentially about a mixed up mother of two, now split from husband, trying to escape reality in Morocco. The family is dragged about for a bit on mother’s whim with some disconnected suspense-less adventures, before the fun fades when the older daughter gets toothache, and they decide to head for home. There, rather abruptly, the book ends.

A book this short needn’t have a gripping storyline to be good, though (not least when it’s autobiographical, which, apparently, it is). The Moroccan backdrop and strange characters are possibly enough to hold a book together, provided the characters are deep enough, and the imagery is vivid. So is it?

Hideous Kinky is written as a firsthand account by a 4 year old girl, and as such, its viewpoint is candid and naïve, without the clutter of adulthood or the reflection. It is self-absorbed, but not introspective. As we follow the unnamed girl through Marrakeshi markets and Moroccan hitch-hikes, everything is told straight with child-like perception; strange experiences are explained well, but not as vivdly as you might expect. Definitely apparent is that for a five year old, Moroccan mint tea is no less an oddity than English black tea (and neither takes that much explaining). Certainly her mothers’ antics- religious fervour and ambiguous relationships with a collection of male characters – aren’t covered in any more depth than her mention of her mother applying lipstick on the top floor of a bus. It can’t however be read entirely as a 4 year old’s account-  some of the insight and language is too sophisticated, which looses a bit of its authenticity.

In fact, it’s the lack of detail, as much as the information  which is in the book which is intriguing. But still, I can’t help asking myself; is the mother an enigma even to herself, whose confusion and inadequacy is sub-consciously absorbed and emitted by the child narrator, or is she just a 2-D character? Are the men she liaises with deliberately monochromatic as intentional caricatures, or is it just laziness?

I gather the book is in some way a genuine personal account, which accounts for a lot. Guster once wrote-“ honesty is easy, fiction is where genius lies”. And sometimes with autobiography, the effort required in a book to make it readable isn’t bothered with, because it already should be perfect- it’s true to life. Which doesn’t make for good literature.

I can see, however, how it would inspire a worthwhile film- the mannerisms and shape of the characters which are only implicit in the book can be brought to life, and made explicit in film. It’s difficult to have quite such 2-D characters as there are in the book when they’re played by 3-D actors, which is why even though I’ll only give the book 2 out of ten, I’m still going to bother watching the film.

http://durhamduck.org.uk

DUCK is a bunch of university students who get together to raise cash for charities, and whilst at uni it was something I loved being involved in. It offers a huge diversity of experiences-from running marathons, to sourcing random items of furniture, from promoting events with artwork and liaison, to collecting money on the street. It’s a good community of people, great fun, and for a good cause. Now that I’ve left, I’m trying to do my bit to give something back by giving them a knee-up with their net presence.

Site purpose: Audience

The site is predominantly directed at students, as DUCK tries to:

• Promote events and activities which students can get invovled with
• Foster participation by making DUCK accessible and emphasise the shared ownership of its achievements by all students
• Give feedback on what students’ fundraising is achievements. Transparency is a big issue.
• DUCK also takes sponsorship from firms in return for promoting their aims, like grad recruitment for J. P. Morgan.

Other stakeholders are important too- those said sponsors, as well as prospective students, community partners, potential donors, charities seeking grants, and the university or others assessing DUCK’s activities.

Site considerations

Having left Durham, I needed to be able to hand over the site in its entirety to folks who aren’t comfortable with HTML and the like. Not only did it have to be easily maintained, it had to be designed in such a way as to encourage constant updating.

Implementation

The DUCK website is basically a vanilla WordPress implementation. A key goal was to reduce the numbers of plugins, as these are the bits that go dud, or have conflicting update cycles. The most significant addition was something to allow for easy thumbnail creation.

Automation to deliver key feedback and constantly updated data was also important- Yahoo! pipes are used to pull in JustGiving data to keep the most recent donations visible on the front page. Google Apps calendar integration was delivered by the same method.

Apart from that its just some nice imagery with some jQuery to keep it interactive.

I’m hoping the site delivers all that I wanted from it- but now it’s over to this year’s DUCK exec who are keeping it updated and full of the good stuff.