Month: February 2012

Forthcoming Dodie Smiths

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Following on from my recent enthusiasm about Dodie Smith’s autobiography, I was excited when someone (Claire, I think, or maybe Verity) pointed me in the direction of Corsair’s new reprints of some obscure Dodie Smith novels.  I wrote about The Town in Bloom a while ago, which I thought started very well and got a bit worse, but lots of folk have told me that I should be reading The New Moon with the Old.  Once these come out on 15th March (or, more precisely, when Lent is over and I’m allowed to buy books again) these will definitely be flying their way to me.  I love the cover designs, and I really love the cheap price they’re going for at Amazon.  And I say that despite never having got around to sorting out an Amazon Affiliates account.

Anyway, still too under the weather to write much, so I’ll just leave you with the pictures…

The World My Wilderness – Rose Macaulay

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I hope this will turn out coherent.  I wrote most of it a while ago, sent the book away to a friend, and am now trying to complete a review sans book and sans health.  Here goes…

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is my first overlap of A Century of Books.  Rose Macaulay’s The World My Wilderness was published in 1950, a spot which is already occupied on my list by Margaret Kennedy’s Jane Austen.  First come, first reviewed, so it’s Kennedy who’s on the century list.  But I’m still going to talk about Rose Macaulay, naturally…

This is the fifth novel (and eighth book) that I’ve read by Rose Macaulay, and she is becoming one of those reliable writers I know I can pick up and enjoy; the only dud I’ve encountered was Staying With Relations.  Wikipedia tells me that her final novel, The Towers of Trebizond (which I have not read) is ‘widely regarded as her masterpiece’.  I am edging ever closer to it, since The World My Wilderness is her penultimate book, and the other one which people tend to have heard of, if they’ve heard of Macaulay at all.

‘Reliable’ is just another word for ‘consistent’, really, and Macaulay does seem to write in a consistently dry, almost satirical style, pursuing a similar theme in each novel – albeit a theme so broad that she could have written two thousand novels and never needed to approach it from the same angle twice.  It is dangerous to summarise thus (and others may have said this before me – indeed, now I see that Karyn has) but I believe Macaulay’s broad theme across her novels is: ‘What does it mean to be civilised?’  In Keeping Up Appearances this is addressed through literary eschelons; in Crewe Train through the ‘civilised savage’; in Dangerous Ages through psychoanalysis, and so on and so forth.  In The World My Wilderness, the title alludes to this debate – and the setting, postwar France and England, offers the physical destruction and moral weariness that the word ‘wilderness’ suggests.  Macaulay includes an anonymous epigraph, from which she draws the title:

The world my wilderness, its caves my home,
Its weedy wastes the garden where I roam,

Its chasm’d cliffs my castle and my tomb…

The cast of characters is initially broad and confusing (or at least it was to me) and I pesevered by ignoring those who weren’t dominant in the narrative at any one time, then slotting them all together later.  There are so many children and stepchildren and half-siblings that I had to throw my hands up in the air in defeat.  Ok.  Stiffen the sinews, summon the blood.  Here goes.

Helen and Gulliver had Barbary and Richie.  Helen and Gulliver divorced; Helen moved to France with Barbary (leaving Richie behind) and married Maurice, while Gulliver married Pamela.  Helen and Maurice had Roland.  Maurice was drowned in mysterious circumstances, leaving Helen with a stepson Raoul.  Gulliver and Pamela had David, and Pamela is pregnant again.  Phew.  That will do – I’m leaving out mother-in-law and uncle, who make cameo appearances.

There are so many characters, but I’m only going to focus on the two I thought most important.

The novel begins with Barbary and Raoul moving to England (Richie visits his mother in France) and these two form the chief interest of the novel.  Macaulay is often quite playful with names, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that ‘Barbary’ is so close to ‘barbarous’.  She is used to running amok with the French maquis, a group whose aim was to resist the invading Germans, but who extend this resistance to all forms of authority.  She has the same attitude in England, except now her companions are deserters and thieves, living their lawless lives in the bombed out old churches and houses of London.  Her old nurse warns her against being too trusting:

“And I ask, Miss Barbary, that on no account will you ever trust those young men, for of trust they will never be deserving.”

Barbary, experienced in discredited young men, had never thought of trusting any of them.  Lend them something, and you never had it back; leave anything about near them, and you did not see it again.  If they could derive advantage from betraying you, betray you they would; these were the simple laws of their lives, the simple, easy laws of the bad, who had not to reckon with the complication of scruples, but only with gain and loss, comfort and hardship, safety and risk.
[…]
“Oh no, Coxy,” Barbary said, in surprise at the eccentric idea suggested to her.  “I should never trust them.  I mean, trust them with what?  Or to do what?  There couldn’t be anything…”
Barbary is a very Macaulayan character, if you’ll excuse me coining the term: she is something of an outsider, straight-talking, independent, but uncertain of her place in the world.  And the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree – but while Barbary’s inability to cohere with society turns her into a restless, waif-like exile from civilisation, her mother Helen is the selfish, self-absorbed type whose callousness hides behind a veneer of grace and elegance.  She claims to have a ‘phobia of being bored’, and very little breaks through to her heart.  Helen is overtly uncivilised, as Barbary is, but she respects none of the values of civilisation – preferring, instead, a reckless and ambiguous love for beauty.

“As to one’s country, why should one feel any more interest in its welfare than in that of other countries?  And as to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals – or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.  A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?”

“My dear Madame, not almost.  It is a religious ideal.”  The abbe spoke dryly, and did not add anything about the Holy Family at Nazareth, for he never talked in such a manner to his worldly, unbelieving friends.
It is worth noting that Macaulay delights in giving her characters views that are not her own.  She signposts this with a motif running through her novels; that of looking down on writers and novels.  Some readers always want authors to be making a point, moral or otherwise, in their writing; I am happy if a writer can convey characters acting believably.  That is ‘point’ enough for me, and I think for Macaulay too – it would be a mistake to extrapolate too much from her writing, other than an examination of the way that certain characters behave in certain circumstances.  She extends beyond this, to questions as vast as the role of civilisations, but she doesn’t attempt to answer these questions.  Nor could she.

Speaking of her writing… Macaulay has a dry, ironic tone which I’ve preferred in other of her novels.  Sometimes, in The World My Wilderness, she seemed to get a bit carried away with a romanticised, flowing, almost baroque writing style.  Perhaps that fits into the themes – but it did include this section, all of which is one sentence:

In this pursuit he was impelled sometimes beyond his reasoning self, to grasp at the rich, trailing panoplies, the swinging censors,of churches from whose creeds and uses he was alien, because at least they embodied some cintuance, some tradition; while cities and buildings, lovely emblems of history, fell shattered, or lost shape and line in a sprawl of common mass newness, while pastoral beauty was overrun and spoilt, while ancient communities were engulfed in the gaping maw of the beast of prey, and Europe dissolved into wavering anonymities, bitter of tongue, servile of deed, faint of heart, always treading the frail plank over the abyss, rotten-ripe for destruction, turning a slanting, doomed eye on death that waited round the corner – during all this frightening evanesence and dissolution, the historic churches kept their strange courses, kept their improbably, incommunicable secret, linking the dim past with the disrupted present and intimidating future, frail, tough chain of legend, myth, and mystery, stronghold of reaction and preserved values.
This isn’t particularly representative of The World My Wilderness – 200 pages of this would have driven me crazy – but it does pop up now and then, and adds to the richness of Macaulay’s writing, if you can cope with this sort of thing.

I’m afraid this review is going to peter out rather, because I seem to be heading towards semi-consciousness… so, in summary… I liked it, but I think Macaulay newbies might be better off with Crewe Train or Keeping Up Appearances.  Let’s hand over to some other folk, who might have been more conscious whilst writing their reviews…

Others who got Stuck in this Book:

“[…]it is despairing, and unrelentingly sombre and pessimistic.” – Karyn, A Penguin A Week 

“It’s a beautifully written and nuanced story that’s filled with amazing (in the fantastic sense) imagery of a post-war London” – Danielle, A Work in Progress

“It’s a stunning, well-written novel.” – Katherine, A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Hope you all have nicer weekends lined up than I do.  Well, the weekend will probably be fine, it’s just that I’ve come down with a horrible cold… that stage where you feel semi-conscious all the time.  Yeah, not fun.  Lots of bed and Lemsip for me tomorrow… And it’s going to be a pretty brief miscellany, so that I can slump in a heap somewhere.  (Cue violins, etc.)

1.) You know me, I love a review of Miss Hargreaves – and I especially love this one by Chris.  Go and have a gander – and if, for some strange reason, you’ve yet to read the novel… get to it!

2.) Doesn’t The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel look wonderful?  I can’t believe Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Penelope Wilton are in a film together – and one that looks such heartwarming fun.

3.) A review of Diary of a Provincial Lady, you say?  Iris and Jenny are happy to oblige.

Look Back With Love – Dodie Smith

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I am growing very fond of those lovely folk at Slightly Foxed.  Last December I had spotted that they were publishing Dodie Smith’s first autobiography, Look Back With Love (1974), and was umming and ahhhing about asking for a review copy… when they offered me one!  Although I’m always flattered to be offered books by any publisher, my heart does a little jump for joy (medically sound, no?) when it’s a reprint publisher doing the offering.  And even more so when it’s one of these beautiful little Slightly Foxed Editions (I covet the *lot*) – and even more so when it’s a title I’ve wanted to read ever since I first read and loved I Capture the Castle back in 2003.

I was not disappointed.  Look Back With Love is simply a lovely, warming, absorbing book.  It is only the possibility that I may prefer one of her other three autobiographical instalments (think of it; three!) which prevents me adding it to my 50 Books You Must Read list just yet…

You may have gathered from all those volumes of autobiography that Smith doesn’t cover her whole life in Look Back With Love.  Indeed, she only gets as far as fourteen by the end of this book, placing it firmly in childhood memoir territory.  I do have a definite fondness for memoirs which focus on, or at least include, childhood – as evinced by my championing of Emma Smith’s The Great Western Beach, Angelica Garnett’s Deceived With Kindness, Harriet Devine’s Being George Devine’s Daughter, Terence Frisby’s Kisses on a Postcard, Christopher Milne’s The Enchanted Places, and one of Slightly Foxed’s other recent titles, P.Y. Betts’ People Who Say Goodbye.  I especially like them if they cover the Edwardian period – perhaps because that means the subjects will have been adults in the interwar period which I love so dearly.  What links all these autobiographies, besides their recountings of childhood, is that they recount happy childhoods.  That is to say, they all find and express happy moments from within their childhoods, rather than prioritising the miserable or cruel.  Misery memoirs, I’m afraid, will never have a place on my bookcases.  I can understand why people write them – it must be a form of catharsis – but I cannot begin to fathom why people want to read them.

Dodie Smith’s family sounds like it was wonderfully fun.  True, her father died in her early childhood, and she was an only child, but these sad circumstances do not seem to have held her back.  She certainly didn’t grow up isolated: her widowed mother moved back to her parents’ house, and so Dodie grew up surrounded by grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  The aunts gradually married and moved, but three uncles remained bachelors and meant (Smith says) that she never felt the absence of a father.  The dynamics of the family certainly don’t seem to be lacking much.  As the only child amidst so many adults, Smith was showered with affection and approval – and no small amount of teasing…

Somehow I knew I must never resent teasing and though I sometimes kicked my uncles’ shins in impotent rage, never, never did it make me cry.  Teasing must be accepted as fun.  And I now see it as one of the great blessings bestowed on me by those three uncles whom, even when they became elderly men, I still referred to as ‘the boys’.
Smith’s autobiography is not a string of momentous occasions, really, but a continuous, welcoming stream of memory.  Of course there are individual anecdotes, but the overall impression I got was of a childhood gradually being unveiled before us, with stories and impressions threaded subtly into what feels like a complete picture.  I was mostly struck by how accurate Smith’s memory seems to be:

All the memories I have so far described are crystal clear in my mind; I see them almost like scenes on the stage, each one lit by its own particular light: sunlight, twilight, flickering firelight, charmless gaslight or the, to me, dramatic light of a carried taper.
This particular comment is actually an apology for the fact that, for recollections before she turned seven, Smith cannot recall exact chronology.  Well!  I have come to realise that my own memory is rather shoddy.  I remember strikingly little about my childhood – or, indeed, about any of my past.  If family and friends talk about an event, there’s a good 50/50 chance that it’ll come back to me – but if I were to sit down and try to write an autobiography, I think I’d come unstuck on about p.5.  I just can’t remember very much, at least not without prompts.  Curious.  But it makes me all the more impressed when writers like Smith seem effortlessly to delve into their past and convey it so wonderfully – especially since Smith was in her late 70s when she wrote this memoir.

With memoirs, I seem especially drawn to people (like Harriet Devine) who grew up amongst theatrical folk, people (like Irene Vanbrugh) who became actors, or (like Felicity Kendal) both.  There’s always been a part of me that wishes I’d grown up alongside actors and theatre managers.  Although I have no genuine aspirations to be an actor, I’m endlessly fascinated by the world of the stage, especially before 1950.  Well, although Smith’s relatives were not connected with the theatre professionally, several were keen amateurs, and some of my many delights in Look Back With Love were Smith’s first adventures upon the stage – especially the ad-libbing.

These sections were all the more enjoyable because Smith made frequent reference to her later career as a playwright.  (I’ve only read one of her plays – her first, published under a pseudonym – but am now keen to read more.)  When I wrote about P.Y. Betts’ People Who Say Goodbye I commented that it was as though her childhood had been hermetically sealed.  Not once did she introduce her later life, or make links across the decades.  This worked fine for me, since I’d never heard of Betts before, and was happy to take her memoir on her terms.  Since I came to Look Back With Love with an extant interest in Dodie Smith, I’ve have been disgruntled if she hadn’t made these connections between stages in her life (although, tchuh, she didn’t mention I Capture the Castle.)

I keep saying that different things from this book were my favourite part… well, that’s because I loved so much of it.  But I think, honestly and truly, my favourite element was Smith’s ability to write about houses.  I love houses.  Not just to live in (they’re handy for that) but as subjects for novels, autobiographies, TV redecoration programmes…  Chuck me a novel where the house is central, and I’m in.  Write something like Ashcombe and I’m delirious.  So I loved the way Smith conveyed the various houses she lived in.  Not that she wrote in huge detail about decor or style, although these were mentioned – more that, somehow, she manages to make the reader feel as though they were also residents in the houses, looking around each room with the familiarity of those who share Smith’s memories.  I can’t pinpoint an excerpt which made me feel like this; it permeates the book.

Most of Look Back With Love is (as the title suggests) lit by the glow of nostalgia.  The humour tends to be gentle, intertwined with the fond remembrance of innocent times past, rather than knockabout comedy, but there was one excerpt which made me laugh out loud.  It’s part of Smith’s tales of schooldays:

My mother felt the elocution lessons were well worth the extra she paid for them, but she was not pleased when Art became an extra, too.  Drawing, plain and simple, was in the curriculum but, after we had been drawing for a year or so, the visiting mistress would bend over one’s shoulder and say quietly, “I think, dear, you may now tell your mother you are ready for Shading.”  This, said my mother, merely meant she had to pay half a guinea extra for me to smother my clothes with charcoal; but it would have been a bad social error to refuse Shading once one was ready for it, so she gave in.  I then spent a full term on a bunch of grapes – the drawing mistress brought them with her twice and then we had to remember them; they were tiring fast.  After a few terms of Shading pupils were permitted to tell their mothers they were “ready for Oils”, but mothers must have been unresponsive for I can recall only one painting pupil.  She had a very small canvas on a very large easel and was generally to be seen staring helplessly at three apples and a Japanese fan.  After many weeks I heard the drawing mistress say to her brightly, “One sometimes finds the best plan is to start all over again.”
Lovely, no?

This has gone on for quite long enough, so I’m going to finish off with a characteristic piece of Dodie’s writing.  The setting, ladies and gents, is the senior (mark it, senior) dancing class.

There were so many superb boys that I did not see how I could be without a partner, but I was soon to realise that there were two girls too many and I was always one of them.  Few of the boys were younger than fifteen.  I was only nine and small for my age, but I could never understand why they were not interested in me – I felt so very interesting.

This is the rhythm which is maintained throughout Look Back With Love: young Dodie always thought she was very interesting, and old Dodie looks back across the years with the same level of interest, albeit now more detached.  There is every possibility that this level of self-importance in a child would have been irritating for those around her – Smith freely confesses that she used to recite and perform at the merest suggestion of the drop of a hat – but, from the adult Smith, it pulls the reader along with the same happy enthusiasm.  Smith’s childhood was not wildly unusual, but the way she is able to describe it elevates Look Back With Love above other childhood memoirs.  Everything, everyone, is capable of interesting Dodie Smith (adult and infant), and this makes her the most fascinating subject of all.  It is rare that I am bereft to finish a book.  A mere handful of titles have had this effect on me in the past five years.  But Look Back With Love is one – as I turned the final page, I longed for more; I longed to know why she made such dark hints about her stepfather; how her playwriting took off; how she experienced the theatre of the 1930s… thank goodness there are three more volumes to read!

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

Well, I was going to do a round-up of other bloggers who’ve written about Look Back With Love, but I can only find one who has!  But they say it’s quality not quantity, and you couldn’t do better than Elaine’s review over on Random Jottings:  “Look back with Love is a lovely, lovely, lovely book.  It is charming, it is delightful, it is beguiling, it made me laugh and it made me cry and I adored every single word of it and was very sad to finish it. […]”

The Readers and My Life in Books

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If you enjoy reading Stuck-in-a-Book but have always thought that it was missing a certain audio quality, then I have just the thing for you!  Simon S and Gav very kindly asked me to contribute my Five Favourite Books to their awesome weekly podcast The Readers – and it’s now up!  I’m at the end of the podcast, but obviously you should listen to the whole thing.  Here it is!  Probably not a lot of surprises there for regular readers of SiaB, but I had such fun doing it (and re-doing it when I went on for too long the first time – is anyone surprised?!)

My e-friend Julie alerted me to the fact that the second series of BBC Two’s My Life in Books is on its way – some info here – and that seems like a good bandwagon-jumping opportunity.  Some of you will remember that I shamelessly ripped off the idea (and title) for my own My Life in Books series last March/April, inviting some of my favourite bloggers and blog-readers to participate, in mystery-partner pairs.  You can still read them all by clicking on the image below…

Well, I’ve decided to do it again!  Last time I decided not to ask bloggers in their 20s and 30s, since we’ve barely begun our reading life – but I rejigged the questions a bit, took away any age limit, and contacted another 16 of my favourite bloggers and asked them to join in.  I’m delighted to say that every single one of them said yes!  Not sure exactly when the series will start, but it’ll be sometime in the next two months.  Just thought I’d get you excited about it – it’s going to be a fun few collaborative months here at Stuck-in-a-Book, what with Elizabeth Taylor Centenary Celebrations, Muriel Spark Reading Week, and My Life in Books.  Isn’t the blogosphere fun?

Another Blogger Meeting

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I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of bloggers over the past four or so years – one of these days I must compile a list and see quite how many I have met – but the award for furthest-flung blogger has to go to Karyn of A Penguin A Week, whom I met in Oxford today.  Karyn has come all the way from Australia to Penguin-hunt, as you are probably aware if you read her fab blog.  Well, when I saw that she was heading to these shores, I decided we should definitely have lunch and scour some bookshops together – and she thought it sounded like a good plan too.

I arrived a little early at The Nosebag, my favourite lunch place in Oxford, and wandered around to see if Karyn was there yet.  She wasn’t, but I did bump into an old housemate, and had to explain that I was meeting somebody off the internet, and only had the small photograph from their site by which to identify them.  Liz (the said housemate) is familiar with my blogging excursions to some extent, but I think I made an ‘interesting’ impression on the guy with whom she was having lunch…

So I popped outside, and there Karyn was, browsing through the books of the shop next door: I had chosen the eaterie not solely for its good food, but for its proximity to Arcadia, which specialises in Penguins.  We sat, ate, and nattered.  As always when I meet bloggers, it feels like I’ve known them forever, and I gab away nineteen-to-the-dozen.

Then off we went, to Arcadia, Oxfam, and the Albion Beatnik bookshop.  In all three, we both bought at least one book – in the first, Karyn very kindly bought me the book I’d eyed: Molly Keane’s Young Entry.  She also told me how great The Quest For Corvo by A.J.A. Symons was, which reminded me that I borrowed a copy about eight years ago…

Later I got a few more – as always, I love to share my spoils, so here be they:

They Were Defeated – Rose Macaulay
Bachelors Anonymous – P.G. Wodehouse

A Man With A Horn – Dorothy Baker
The Far Cry – Emma Smith
Smoke and other early stories – Djuna Barnes
Young Entry – M.J. Farrell/Molly Keane


I didn’t keep track of what Karyn was finding, but I’m sure they’ll appear on her blog in due course.  It was a really fun afternoon, and yet another reason to be grateful for that day when I decided starting a blog could be a fun idea – who knew all the people I’d get to meet?

Oh, and my favourite moment of the day?  When the owner of one bookshop suddenly asked me: “Do you know how to make jelly?”

Erm…

Right Ho, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

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I found this post in my drafts, but it was originally published in 2012 – I put it in drafts because it got a lot of spam comments, but hopefully it is back to normal now. I didn’t mean to email it out :D

My book group recently read Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) by P.G. Wodehouse.  I always like an excuse to read some Wodehouse.  A diet of nothing else would be like living on ice cream, but as an occasional snack, there is nothing better.  And it would be a mistake to think that, since PGW makes for such easy reading, that it is easy writing.  I think Wodehouse is one of the best wordsmiths (or should that be wordpsmiths?) I have read, and it is far more difficult to write a funny book than it is to write a poignant or melancholy book.

But perhaps there are people out there who have yet to read any Wodehouse?  Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the way he writes (since, let’s face it, there is minimal variety within his output.)  In the typical Wodehouse novel you will have comic misunderstandings, elaborate disguises, accidental engagements, wrathful aunts, and everybody ending up happy in the end.  This formula is more certain than ever in a Jeeves and Wooster novel, where rich, foolish young Wooster gets himself entangled in a comedy of errors, and wise butler Jeeves demurely extracts him from them.

But the sheer joy, the genius, of Wodehouse is his wordplay.  It’s the kind of thing which will either appeal or not, and is impossible to explain into funniness (which is true of all humour, probably) – Wodehouse uses language like an acrobat, dashing from hyperbole to understatement in a moment; finding the longest way to express the shortest phrase; finding the most unexpected metaphors and similes, and twisting them all together alongside absurd slang and abbreviation.  Who but Wodehouse could have written this line?

Girls are rummy.  Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.
Or have conceived of this image, when serving an aunt with alcohol?

“Give me a drink, Bertie.”

“What sort?”

“Any sort, so long as it’s strong.”

Approach Bertram Wooster along these lines, and you catch him at his best.  St. Bernard dogs doing the square thing by Alpine travellers could not have bustled about more assiduously.

Like Richmal Crompton’s William Brown, Bertram ‘Bertie’ Wooster is nothing if not blessed with aunts – most of whom view him with an unwavering, and understandable, loathing and distrust.  But, like William Brown, Wooster is endlessly well-meaning.  This is what makes him such an attractive hero – more or less all the messes in which he finds himself are caused by trying to help others, often in the romantic department.  Although Wooster himself sees engagement as a misery beyond all others, he often attempts to help others reach this state (invariably finding himself engaged to the soppiest female present.)

But so far I have not been specific.  I should mention Right Ho, Jeeves.  Aunt Dahlia – the only aunt who can tolerate Wooster, although she demonstrates the sort of affection which is shown through terse telegrams and much use of the term ‘fathead’ – summons Wooster to her mansion in Market Snodsbury, Worcestershire.  (Not many novels feature Worcestershire, the county in which I was raised, so it’s nice to see it get a mention – and Pershore, no less, which was the nearest town to my house.  If you’re thinking the village name is ridiculous, I should mention that Upton Snodsbury is in the area, and presumably inspired Wodehouse.)  He is being summoned to distribute prizes at a school, a fate which Wooster would rather avoid, to put it mildly.  So he ropes in newt-fanatic Gussie Fink-Nottle, who had been looking for an excuse to go there.  For why, you ask?  Well, with the coincidental air which characterises so many of Wodehouse’s convoluted plots, the girl with whom Fink-Nottle is besotted happens to be staying there.  She, ‘the Bassett disaster’ as Wooster terms her, comes across pretty clearly in his first description of her:

I don’t want to wrong anybody, so I won’t go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don’t sometimes feel that the stars are God’s daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.

The romantic entanglements do not end there, of course.  Wooster’s cousin Angela and her beau Tuppy also have something of a rollercoaster relationship, just to add to festivities.  Then there is Wooster’s white jacket, which Jeeves is determined shall not be worn…

My favourite scene from this, and one which often appears in anthologies etc., is Gussie at the prize-giving.  All I’ll say is that he’s been drinking, for the first time in his life.  It’s supposed to stiffen the sinews and summon the blood, but it’s a little more chaotic than that.

This isn’t my favourite Wodehouse novel.  I think I prefer the stand-alone books to the series, perhaps because they’re all the more unexpected and strange.  But Wodehouse’s exceptionally brilliant use of language is on fine form in Right Ho, Jeeves and I certainly loved reading this.  There are many imitators, but nobody can equal Wodehouse for his strand of comic writing – and a dose of it, in between other books, is always, always welcome.

London (Part Two)

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Ok, we’ve looked at the spoils I bought – but those were not the only books I dragged home on the train, because there were some lovely books handed out to us at the Bloomsbury event – more anon.  (I’m afraid uploading photos broke halfway through writing this, hence lack of pictures.)

There are quite a few publishers who have been in touch with me over the years, and although review copies do not flow at the rate they once did –  a combination of (for the world) the recession and (for my blog) a focus away from modern literature – I am very lucky to know some incredibly lovely people at these companies.  And two publishers (Bloomsbury and Sceptre, since you ask) tie for being the very most lovely.  Bloomsbury might just inch ahead, because although they don’t have access to Debo Devonshire (I did once inform Nikki Barrow at Sceptre that I’d be very willing to put up the Duchess on my sofa, if she were ever visiting Oxford) Bloomsbury’s Alice does exchange tales of baking disasters with me.  In my world, that’s lovely.

So I was delighted when Alice got in touch and asked me if I’d like to attend a Tea Party with various other bloggers, some authors, and the various members of staff at Bloomsbury.  One quick reshuffle of my work days, and I RSVPed an eager ‘yes!’

It was lovely to see some of my favourite bloggers again – amongst those I’d met before were Elaine, Karen, Kim, Jackie, Lynne, and Marcia/Lizzy Siddal.  New to me were Victoria/Litlove and Jane.  I think that’s everyone, apologies if not!  It was especially wonderful to finally meet Victoria, after years of reading her blog – we didn’t get to chat for that long, but she was just as great as I’d anticipated.  I barely spoke to Jane at the Tea, but we had a very animated chat whilst we waited for the post-tea event… more on that later!

It’s always difficult (I assume) to organise these events – how do you make sure the authors get to see everyone?  How do you make it friendly and still get information across?  How the heck do you stop bloggers gabbing away to one another all night?  Well, Bloomsbury did it marvellously.  We had plenty of time to mingle and natter, meeting many Bloomsbury folks (indeed, re-meeting quite a few, whom I’d met at the launch for Kisses On A Postcard 2.5 years ago) and I especially enjoyed chatting with Katie Bond from the publicity department.  Katie had somehow found out my outrageous (but sadly true) statement that I have to be heartily persuaded to leave my comfort zone and read anything post-1950 – and she teased me about it, especially when she caught me leaving the party with an armful of books.

Those books being: William Boyd’s Waiting for Sunrise, A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson, A Card from Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp, and The Forrests by Emily Perkins.

Boyd popped in briefly to sign copies and have a chat, in a maelstrom of visiting dozens of bookshops across London.  Joinson gave a lovely talk about her book, which made me desperately want to read it – actually I was most pleased by her discussion of her blog and what it’s like when you meet someone who has read it.  I naively don’t think about any of the non-commenters who read my blog (although statistics tell me they make up about 95% of my readership) and I’m always surprised when people in Real Life turn out to be lurkers.

I was most excited about hearing Kate Summerscale, who spoke very winningly, humbly yet convincingly about her upcoming book Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace, based on the real diaries of a disgraced Victorian wife (who, in turn, protested that they were her own imaginary scenarios, rather than fact, when her husband discovered them.)  Fascinating stuff, and I can’t wait for copies to be available.

Alexandra Pringle, the doyenne of Bloomsbury, gave a wonderfully impassioned talk on behalf of several Bloomsbury titles, and the new venture Bloomsbury Circus – and it was eight words from her which made me desperate to get my hands on The Forrests by Emily Perkins: “It reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.”  As Jackie pointed out, this statement could have the opposite effect – but it certainly did wonders for my keenness to read the novel.  It’s out 24th May, but I snaffled away a copy… you’ll be hearing more about that soon, and probably not just from me.

The fun and games couldn’t last forever, sadly, and all too soon bloggers were donning coats, grabbing an extra book on the way to the door, and heading on their separate ways… except for three of us, that is, as Jane, Lynne, and I stayed behind to hear Susannah Clapp talk about Angela Carter (and A Card From Angela Carter) with Sir Christopher Frayling.  We were very lucky to get places, as it was sold out very early, and even lovely Alice couldn’t get in.  I found it fascinating – not only the speakers, but more or less everyone in the room seemed to have known Angela, and had their anecdotes to share.  Carter is an author I am keen to explore, and this talk made me ten times keener.

All in all, a lovely day – thanks Bloomsbury!

London (Part One)

StuckinaBook All 30 Comments

Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogosphere this week (although perhaps it won’t have felt like that to you!) – I seem to have been utterly exhausted all week, hitting the hay as soon as I get in through the door.

Of course, that hasn’t been oh-so-early every night.  On Thursday I got home at about 9.30pm after a day packed with fun in London.  Well, actually, my morning was spent having a lovely conversation with my friend Clare, who used to work at the Bodleian with me, and now lives in my third favourite city in Britain (I think), Edinburgh – it comes after Oxford and Bath, in case you were wondering, although I do have a soft spot for Wells, for being not remotely like a city.

First things first in London, I headed off to Notting Hill Book and Comic Exchange.  I don’t know the geography of London at all well, and basically I navigate by the bookshops I know and love.  There must be lots that are waiting for me, which I’ve somehow never found – but I buy more than enough from this one, trust me.  This is the first time I’ve taken books in to sell/exchange – a hefty pile, for which (he barked at me) “£6 sale, £12 exchange”.  Well, what do you think I did?  And with my £12 vouchers in hand, I headed off to browse.

If you’re thinking that £12 for about 15 books was a little mean of them, then fear not – very few of their books are more than £2 or £3, and there are three big (unsorted) basement rooms where books are 50p each.  But I didn’t have the time to head down there – nor, since they put in lots more bookcases, do I find it a particularly enjoyable place to browse – but the cream of the crop is upstairs.  In the past I’ve found a signed novel by Rose Macaulay (£1), a signed novel by A.P. Herbert (£1) and countless other gems.  On Thursday I certainly came away with a sizeable pile… and today’s post I’m going to tell you about them.  In tomorrow’s post, I’ll write about the reason I was in London – which was to attend a wonderful party put on the deliciously delightful folk at Bloomsbury.

So… onto the books.  These, by the way, include my 2000th book, according to my LibraryThing account.  I wonder which one it was… anyway, here they all are.  As per usual – comments, please, especially if you’ve read them!

London Feb 2012 1 by Stuck-in-a-Book

 

A Dedicated Man – Elizabeth Taylor
Appropriate during her centenary year.  There always seems to be an ET on their shelves, oddly enough.

Identity – Milan Kundera
I read this a while ago (thoughts here) but wanted a copy for myself – and it’s in the same quirky edition.

The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter
This was pretty appropriate on the way to an Angela Carter event!  I adore these Virago patterned editions, but this is the first one I’ve actually got – and it’s beautiful!

Travel Light – Naomi Mitchison
Well, a cheap VMC… why not?  And one with a nice cover, too.

London Feb 2012 2 by Stuck-in-a-Book

The Unmade Bed – Francoise Sagan
A lovely Hesperus edition of an author I’ve been doing my usual: collecting, and not getting around to buying.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Brian Moore
Quite a few of you recommended this when I listed the books published in 1985 – and what can I do but obey?

The Man Who Planted Trees – Jean Giono
Ok, I already have this – but it’s the illustrations which make little books like this, and this edition has different illustrations.  Harry Brockway, since you ask.

Loving and Giving – Molly Keane
Absolutely hideous edition, but needs must.  Well, not needs, perhaps.  But I was (wait for it) Keane to read more Keane.

Mansfield – C.K. Stead
I have read some of Stead’s criticism of Katherine Mansfield, but I hadn’t realised that she (or perhaps he… hmm…) had written a novelisation of Mansfield’s life.

Slightly Foxed pile by Stuck-in-a-Book

Slightly Foxed…
They also had six old copies of the Slightly Foxed Quarterly – and I grabbed all of ’em.