A Memoir of Love, Exile and Crosswords

Atlantic Books, pounds 12.99, 198 pp
ISBN: 1843540363

在這本小冊子裡, Sandy Balfour 自陳她是如何變成一個 crossword 遊戲的嗜好者。或許，車友和格友們會想：『我既然不玩這遊戲，那又何必看它？』其實，它正是像經典的"萬里任禪遊(“>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenenace)"一書，你不必了解機車要怎麼維修，也是能好好地享受。

For Balfour is interested in journeys – from South African to Englishman, from single man to family man, from 20-year-old to 40-year-old and from crossword ignoramus to crossword aficionado. He takes these journeys and weaves them into an intriguing tale in which he dissects the nature of “Englishness" and how it relates to the quiet but addictive pastime of crossword-solving and the imperceptible growth of love. The writing is spare but imbued with passion for his subjects. Starting as a young man of 20 hitching out of his South African homeland with his girlfriend, he covers 20 years of his life travelling the globe, learning how to solve crosswords and developing his relationship with his girlfriend from couple to family.

The book contains arresting descriptions, such as London’s buildings “talking to each other, like parents over the heads of their wayward children", or a skyscraper taking on the appearance of a crossword pattern as its room lights are turned on. There are insightful thoughts on crosswords and Englishness: “I remember my mother’s aunt in Nairobi. I remember the Telegraph crossword, and how it rang in that household louder then Big Ben", and on the differences between the English broadsheets as exemplified by their crosswords: take the solution BLUE MURDER – The Daily Telegraph had “Outcry at Tory assassination (4,6)," while The Guardian favoured “Clamour for Tory assassination (4,6)".

Naturally, the book covers the views of English crossword compilers on their craft and the subtleties of the English language. But Balfour also gives us snapshots from his travels around the world as a television documentary producer – the American air force officers talking about their power “to kill anyone, anytime, anywhere" and exchanges with rebels in “a slow and mean" civil war in the Congo. By the author’s reactions to these encounters and others we see him move along the path to “Englishness".

The book adds up to more than the sum of its parts and lingers in the memory long after the final page has been read. (The solution to the book’s title, incidentally, is RE BELLED ie Belle (pretty girl) inside RED (Crimson) giving RE-BELLE-D (ie rose, as in “rose up in rebellion")

Val Gilbert 是英國 The Sunday and Daily Telegraphs 報紙 crossword 段落的編輯。

本書可由 Amazon.co.uk 購得。美國亞馬遜尚未有藏書。