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Cheerful Weather for the Wedding: Readalong

StuckinaBook All , , 42 Comments

Right, books at the ready!  I’ve re-read Cheerful Weather for the Wedding ahead of seeing the new film (which I’ll be doing in one week’s time, at The Phoenix in Oxford, which has a one-night-only screening) and I’m opening up this post for discussion.  It won’t be one of my usual reviews, because I’ve actually already reviewed the novel (novella?) here, but more of a hub for conversation about it.

But I’ll give you a quick overview of my thoughts on re-reading Cheerful Weather for the Wedding.  It might be worth popping over and reading my thoughts in 2009, if you’d be so kind… basically I loved every moment, particularly the hilarious secondary characters.  Most memorable were mad Nellie (who spouts irrelevant conversations she has had with the plumber, while addressing the tea-tray) and brothers Tom and Robert, who come to a contretemps over the latter’s unorthodox emerald socks.  (I’m assuming that everyone knows the basic plot by this point – Dolly is uncertainly preparing for her wedding to Owen, with a houseful of eccentrics helping and hindering her – and a bottle of rum within reach.)

This time around, I found the novella a little less amusing, but mostly because I already knew where all my favourite bits were coming.  It is testament to Strachey’s humour that Nellie, Tom, and Robert have remained firmly fixed in my mind, down to their individual lines (“Put your head in a bag” still makes me grin) but inevitably surreal moments of humour heavily rely upon novelty.  Her cast of near-grotesques were still a delight, but not quite as much the second time around.

This, however, left me more able to appreciate other aspects to Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (and not just that sublime cover – I kept closing the book just to stare at it for a bit longer.)  I’d appreciated Strachey as a comic writer, but hadn’t really noticed how gorgeous some of her other writing is.  Her propensity to describe every character’s eyes when they arrive on the scene was slightly unnerving, but depictions of buildings and countryside were really lovely, and contrasted well with the surreal descriptions of people.  I couldn’t resist this excerpt…

Dolly’s white-enamelled Edwardian bedroom jutted out over the kitchen garden, in a sort of little turret.  It was at the top of the house, and reached by a steep and narrow stairway.  Coming in at the bedroom door, one might easily imagine one’s self to be up in the air in a balloon, or else inside a lighthouse.  One saw only dazzling white light coming in at the big windows on all sides, and through the bow window directly opposite the door shone the pale blue sea-bay of Malton.

This morning the countryside, through each and all of the big windows, was bright golden in the sunlight.  On the sides of a little hill quite close, beyond the railway cutting, grew a thick hazel copse.  To-day, with the sun shining through its bare branches, this seemed to be not trees at all, but merely folds of something diaphanous floating along the surface of the hillside – a flock of brown vapours, here dark, there light – lit up in the sunshine.

And all over the countryside this morning the bare copses looked like these brown gossamer scarves; they billowed over the hillsides, here opalescent, there obscure – according to the sunlight and shadow among their bronze and gauzy foldings.
It can’t just be me who wants to move in immediately?  But I couldn’t leave you without a moment of Strachey’s wonderfully wicked humour…

“How are your lectures going?” asked Kitty of Joseph, a kind of desperate intenseness in her voice and face.  This was her style of the moment with the male sex.
And now over to you!  If you post a review of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding during the week, please pop a link in the comments (I’ll probably do a round-up later in the week) but I’d also like this to be a place for discussion – do reply to each other’s comments, and I’ll join in, and it’ll be FUN.  I won’t post for another two or three days, to give everyone a chance to see this.

Here are some questions to start things going:

Did you enjoy the novel, for starters!?

What do you think Julia Strachey was trying to achieve – what sort of book was she trying to write?

Why do you think Strachey made it so short?  Would it have worked as a longer novel?

Who were your favourite characters?

If you’re re-reading, how did you opinion change this time?

How do you think it will translate to cinema?

Cheerful Weather For The Wedding

StuckinaBook All , , 5 Comments

I finished Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather For The Wedding the other day – I’m reading short books in snatches while writing my dissertation, and this is one of the Persephone Books is one I’ve meaning to read for a while. Elaine at Random Jottings gave it to me many moons ago, but somehow it’s only just worked its way to the top of the pile.

Well, I’m very glad Elaine could spare it, as I loved every second! This short novel (120pp) all takes place on the wedding day of Dolly and Owen. And it’s very, very funny. There is a semi-serious romance storyline through the centre of it (should Dolly be marrying Owen? Will they actually get married?) but it is the host of secondary characters which make this novel (or perhaps novella?) so amusing. My favourites are brothers Robert and Tom – the latter spends the entire novel trying to persuade the former to change his emerald-coloured socks: “Robert, your mother would desire you to go upstairs instantly to take off those bounder’s socks, Robert, and to change into a respectable pair. Will you go, Robert?” He is distraught lest their schoolfellows – ‘men from Rugby’ – be at the wedding and witness this calamatous social faux pas. Robert’s iterated response is “Go and put your head in a bag.” I kept hoping these two would crop up, even though they essentially said the same thing every time they appeared, it was done so amusingly and accurately that I could have read pages of Tom’s serious monotone and Robert’s complete lack of care.

And then there’s dotty Nellie-from-the-village, one of the ‘help’:

“The gentleman that come to see about the hot pipes out in the lobby, said to me, ‘ have two of my own,’ he said, ‘what are both of them big strapping great boys by now. And oh… good golly! – what devils and demons they do be!’ he said. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘my son Teddy is exactly the very same thing over again,’ I said. ‘All the time this cigarette-smoking, they pointed boots, and all of it, why, devils and demons isn’t in it with such as they are,’ I said. No. Very decidedly not!”

The whole family, and especially servants, are very funny characters – slightly ridiculous, but not too exaggerated as to not ring true. I suppose that’s why the humour is so good – rooted in the actual. Sort of a less-hyperbolic PG Wodehouse, perhaps. Crossed with Virginia Woolf.

According to IMDB there is a film of Cheerful Weather For The Wedding due in 2010. The only information about it at the moment is that Sinead Cusack is attached – I suppose she’ll play Mrs. Thatcham. I’m not sure the novel will make a good film, actually – sometimes lines which are great written down lose everything when spoken. Still, I’ll keep an open mind until I see it, which I undoubtedly will.

If you’re wavering on Cheerful Weather For The Wedding, I encourage you to give it a go (though this comes with a warning that not everyone agrees with me: see this review by Vintage Reads) – it’s recently been released in the beautiful Persephone Classics edition (pictured) which should make it more easily available… and I might just have to get myself a copy of that one too. I think it’s entered my Top Five Persephones, and since I’ve read all or part of over thirty, that’s not bad at all.