As I mentioned recently, I spent last weekend in Cambridge at a conference about Elizabeth von Arnim. It was really enjoyable; the people there were divided between those who knew everything about E von A and those (like me) who really like her, but haven’t read them all (I’ve only read about eight). The panel I spoke on had three people (including the chair) who’d published books about von Arnim… and me. But they made me feel very welcome, and I spoke about one of her lesser-known novels, Father (1931).
Rather than replicate my paper, I’ll do something more akin to my usual book reviews – though stealing some of the same research! Father is a novel that reminded me an awful lot of Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. In both, an unmarried woman is desperate for her independence, and not to be subservient in her relative’s home. For Laura Willowes, it’s her brother’s home; in Father it’s – you guessed it! – the father’s. Jennifer is 31 and a slave to her widowed father, a writer; she laments ‘the years shut up in the back diningroom at a typewriter, with no hope that anything would ever be different’. Only things are different. Father is getting married again, to Netta, who is younger than Jennifer. She sees her opportunity for escape: she can move to the countryside.
Through and beyond father she saw doors flying open, walls falling flat, and herself running unhindered down the steps, along Gower Street, away through London, across suburbs, out, out into great sun-lit spaces where the wind, fresh and scented, rushed to meet her […] Jen, her wide-open eyes shining with the reflection of what she saw through and beyond father. She could feel the wind – she could feel it, the scented fresh wind, blowing up her hair as she ran and ran…
And, like Laura Willowes, she does move to the countryside. Only things aren’t quite as uncomplicated as she’d hoped. Waiting for her, in that village, are James and Alice – the vicar and his tyrannical sister – who make an interesting parallel to Jennifer and her father. Alice is also a spinster, but holds all the power in her brother’s house – and is keen to dissuade any possible sisters-in-law who might oust her from the vicarage.
Among Elizabeth von Arnim fans, I don’t think Father is particularly well-regarded, but I thought it was excellent. Most of her novels seem to concern marriage, whether happy or unhappy, so to see her tackle the much-discussed issue of ‘surplus women’ in the interwar years was very interesting – and Jennifer is a great character. With her love of nature, her unconventionality (she sleeps outside on a mattress when she first arrives), and her naive but firm belief that she can escape her father’s domain, she is an attractive and engaging heroine.
Though dealing with some slightly sombre issues at times, von Arnim can never leave her humorous tone completely to one side. There are some very funny scenes – particularly, perhaps, one where James and Alice are both trying to abandon the other one in Switzerland (it makes sense in context), though Jennifer’s quirky world-view makes many otherwise mundane sentiments wryly amusing to read.
I’m always intrigued about the effect a choice of title has on a novel. If this one had been called (say) Jennifer, it would feel very different. Though her father isn’t on the scene all that often, calling the novel Father makes him feel curiously omnipresent; it seeps throughout the narrative. A clever decision on Elizabeth von Arnim’s part.
Not the easiest of her books to track down (unless you have a Kindle, where it’s probably free [EDIT: maybe it’s not…]) – and also not up there with her best novels – but definitely an entertaining and interesting one which I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. And a perfect companion to the excellent Lolly Willowes!
AKA a very weird book indeed. Over the years quite a few people have asked me if I’ve read Zuleika Dobson (1911), since it is often seen as the quintessential Oxford novel (after Brideshead Revisited, perhaps, but with the advantage of actually being in Oxford for the whole thing). Well, I hadn’t – and now I have. And what a strange little book it is. This review, incidentally, will have quite a few spoilers – because it’s difficult to write about otherwise, and because they’re probably pretty well known, and some covers give them away. I certainly knew most of the plot before I read it, and it didn’t much matter.
So, what happens? Zuleika opens the novel by turning up to Oxford; she is the niece of the Warden of Judas College (which, incidentally, does not exist – here’s a fun Wikipedia list of fictional colleges) and is there on a visit. Despite being ‘not strictly beautiful’, she is certainly beguiling. And beguile she does. Literally every man she meets (blood relatives excepted) falls in love with her on sight. It’s tiring.
Chief among these admirers – though initially the least disposed to reveal it – is the Duke of Dorset. He is diffident and buttoned-up, and doesn’t appear to be in love with her at first – which sparks off her love for him. Only when he reveals that (but of course) he does adore her does her love fade. It’s all very silly, but isn’t intended to be taken at all seriously. How can one take seriously a novel where nobody behaves with the slightest rationality?
It gets worse. And this is where the spoilers come in. The Duke swears he will die for her, if she does not love him. The idea spreads. And, as rowers race down the Cherwell or Isis or whatever that stretch of the Thames is called (after 11 years I still can’t remember), almost every single undergraduate in Oxford drowns himself for love of Zuleika.
Does she feel guilt about this mass suicide? She does not. Indeed, she remonstrates with the sole undergraduate who chickened out of the thing – in one of the most wonderfully composed insults that I can recall reading:
“You,” flashed Zuleika, “As for you, little Sir Lily Liver, leaning out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan, I do but felicitate the river-god and his nymphs that their water was saved today by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge.”
What makes such a bizarre and surreal novel enjoyable? It certainly isn’t any spark of realism. Indeed,it is closest to a Greek myth. Zeus and Clio are introduced halfway through, but even before this it feels like mythology – in people’s heightened reactions, unlikely actions, and superlative traits. Zuleika is essentially a goddess of beauty – albeit one with occasional feet of clay, and a rather unpleasant character. But it was a moment of genius to make her an amateur (and terrible) magician. Some glorious moments of comedy come from that.
Most importantly, though, Beerbohm writes like a dream. He can turn a sentence beautifully, in the way of people like Oscar Wilde or Saki (whatever else these gents’ works have in common). The prose is a delight to read, but it does open to the accusation: is it all sparkle and no substance? Perhaps, but I don’t mind that, if the sparkle is done brilliantly. Zuleika Dobson is often described as a satire, but I couldn’t work out what it could possibly be a satire of. A satire must have a grounding in truth, and I couldn’t spot it here – unless it is that love makes people do stupid things.
But it doesn’t matter. I doubt a novel like this could exist outside of, say, 1890-1914. It is absolutely of its time. But I never think anything is ‘dated’ – I never know what people mean by that term; a discussion for another day, perhaps – and this curiosity is still great fun to read. Just don’t go looking for a moral.
Having gone through quite a weird ‘freefrom’ week, we’re back to service as normal with… pastry! And some rather nice pink shirt/blouse/flower matching going on between Mel and Sue. Almost enough to ignore their intro. Were these ever good? I’m starting to doubt it.
First off, thanks to those kind people who identified Mat’s accent for me! Not one I’ve heard before, it seems, though I’ve definitely been to BOTH the Sussexes.
Nadiya is still glowing from being Star Baker last week – though correctly summarises that it is another week. Tamal, my friend, would you like to be Star Baker this week?
In a shock turn of events, it seems he would.
So, #BlazerWatch. Erm, guys. The linedance pose is catching. This is the end of life as we know it.
And Mel’s pink looks more orange-pink now.
They’re making frangipane tarts, which is an opportunity for Sue to ‘show off’ her Italian accent. Isn’t a frangipane tart just a Bakewell tart? Have Bakewell got litigious? While Paul mutters something about gluten, Mary knows what the public wants – and gives us the first ‘soggy bottom’ of the series. And doesn’t she look delighted to have done it?
“I’m so NAUGHTY!”
Mel (in the voiceover) and the bakers (in the real world) all pretend that we might not know how to make shortcrust pastry, and earnestly tell us that it should resemble breadcrumbs. Well, quite. Mat leaps miles up in my estimation for scorning a mixer (and the other bakers for using them). He stumbles down a little for having two pineapples and… radishes? on his counter. It doesn’t bode well.
“You don’t want a sticky dough, at the end of the day,” says Paul-the-baker. If you’ve only got dough at the end of the day, Paul, sticky or otherwise, then you’ll probably have failed the challenge.
Alvin isn’t poaching his plums, he is fanning them. Mel gurns and winks and all that sort of thing, but he manfully ignores her. Paul is poaching his pears – is poaching the new proving drawer? – and is apparently making ‘my version of a Christmas frangipane’. Is there a generally-accepted version of a Christmas frangipane? I’ve been missing out.
“How’s it going to look when you’ve finished? What sort of look are we looking at?” says Paul H, not having had our advantages with Colouring Pencil Man (and apparently thus relapsing into gibberish). “The pears will be going in a circular motion,” says Paul-the-baker. An automaton?? This gets better and better.
Tamal is the first baker of the night to wave alcohol under Mary’s nose – he’s using mulled wine.
One of Ian’s guinea fowl started laying eggs. I mean, sure.
Thank goodness the international egg shortage is finally over.
Nadiya is keen to tell both camera and judges that her tart will, basically, taste of nothing. Mat, on the other hand, is making a piña colada tart, trumping Tamal’s mulled wine with a massive mason jar of rum. Mary immediately lunges for it.
“It’s a forgiving pastry” – Ian. I’m starting to realise that I don’t need to add much commentary to today’s quotations. Instead, let me remind you of the time my friend and I made a quiche. Bear this in mind when I start mocking the simplicity of the task.
(To clarify: I can make pastry, honest.)
The tent are divided over whether or not to blind bake. Mat says he blind bakes “because he read somewhere once that people do”, or some such. When I make Bakewell tarts, I don’t blind bake, fyi. And I think Mary Berry’s recipe for Bakewell tart says not to.
At Home We Have An Aga and Paul come to blows over having trimmed her pastry before blind baking it; Mel and Mary rather adorably rush to her defence, and he panics and reverts to saying “Thank you very much”, as he does in every silence.
At Home We Have An Aga pre-empts being crowned the Frances of the series by acknowledging that she may care too much about the appearance of her bakes. Well, Frances won, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Someone who should be worried – yes, thank you, that segue was all my own – is Alvin, who is rather behind everyone else, and has a half-baked solution about not putting much frangipane in, or something.
Half-baked! Geddit? Geddit?!
Meanwhile, At Home We Have An Aga is making amaretti biscuits, despite not knowing yet whether or not she’s going to put them anywhere.
Mel starts using a million abbrevs (“ten mins on your frange, obvs”) which led to a flurry of friends texting me to point out the similarities between Mel and myself. Or the sims, if you will. (I assume you won’t.)
The tarts are looking delish. People are glazing, icing, and – yes – scattering amaretti biscuits all over the place. Alvin is… still staring into the oven. Oh dear.
Onto the judging. OH. Paul wants a blind bake. I don’t know what to believe any more. Ian does quite badly, and Nadiya has… a soggy bottom!
aaaand drink!
Over at Mat’s station – Mary can’t taste enough rum! Oh noooo! I think, Mary my love, that’s what they call immunity.
Mary isn’t happy with the amaretti at At Home We Have An Aga – “just leave them out” and Mary and Paul argue about whether or not it’s bitter and burnt. But worse is to come over at Alvin Corner. His frangipane isn’t baked.
Mary is on the hunt for rum.
It’s rather heartbreaking. He keeps whispering “I’m so sorry” and I want to give him a hug. After that, Tamal does rather well – which apparently enrages Paul the baker (in a clip which, let’s face it, was probably filmed hours later).
So, quite a few people did surprisingly badly on a more or less simple bake – but the judging was very harsh. And, oh lord, Alvin is talking about the fact that his father was a general in the army and failure wasn’t an option, and I am getting vivid pictures of an eight year old Alvin being sent to his room in disgrace for not whittling the perfect flute or something.
Yes, flute-whittling is apparently my go-to benchmark for success.
So moving on, dear readers, apparently we can’t have any home videos, but we can have a story about someone who once almost died by falling into an eight-foot pie. Sue is given a brief – and, one assumes, entirely fictitious – history of the event by an out-of-work Bruce Springsteen impersonator.
“They buried it because it was off” – genuine thing said by man
All of this segment has to be a spoof. I’m starting to think the BBC has been hacked by trolls. The eyebrows of the gentleman in the supposedly genuinely old-timey video from Denby’s Baking Past are, by themselves, enough to suggest foul play.
Back in the tent, the bakers stare nervously around them, and the technical challenge is unveiled. If you thought things were traditional earlier, then… they’re doing flaounes. These are apparently big in Cyprus during Lent, so of course they make perfect sense for Britain in September. Mary hadn’t heard of them, and it’s more than likely that Paul has made the whole thing up. Though he wouldn’t be the first Paul to have a fondness for Cyprus. #BibleJokes
They look pretty nice, though.
Oh, and they’re cheese-filled. Lent in Cyprus sounds fun. At Home We Have An Aga isn’t so sure. “It just feels wrong. The whole things feels wrong.”
Ian has put his cheese/sultana mix into the proving drawer. Things have gone too far.
Nobody seems to love mastick (or however you spell it), which is grainy and smells like pine trees and/or industrial cleaner. Flaounes are suddenly starting to sound a whole lot less tempting. They’ve also got yeast and everybody’s kneading it, which makes it seem like Paul has sneaked bread into pastry week. At Home We Have An Aga is certainly perplexed, but I’ve shown her perplexed face once already today, so you’re not getting it again.
Everybody is interpreting ‘fold in the corners’ differently, and Tamal informs the others that he hates them. Being, it seems, the anti-Ugne, it just sounds adorable.
The whole thing is over surprisingly quickly (presumably owing to the amount of time we saw Sue stand in a field where a pie was alleged to have been buried), and Paul and Mary come out to judge. They are judging based on qualities that the bakers couldn’t possibly have known needed to be there, like height or where the sesame seeds are. Since we’ve not seen any food pics for a bit, here’s some flaounes – as well as Nadiya’s excellent photocard face.
Mary clearly doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be looking for either, so throws in her usual comments about ‘lovely colour’ and ‘even’. I half expect her to start on the prettiness of the tablecloth. Tamal comes last, followed by Alvin and Paul. The top three are Ian, At Home We Have an Aga, and… Mat! Who looks incredibly surprised. And then salutes.
Tamal is quite witty about having seemed too cocky and being beaten down by the universe. Alvin, on the other hand, is completely dejected.
It’s raining and storming for the final challenge. Things aren’t looking good for Alvin. It’s the first time I can remember them not bothering to say more than one person in the ‘who’s in danger’ bit. Basically, he’s going. Can he make a miraculous comeback with vol-au-vents?
Spoilers: no, probably not.
They’re all making puff pastry, and this feels like a re-do of all the other puff pastry episodes we’ve had in the past – but with the added bonus of Nadiya smashing hers with a rolling pin in a violent frenzy, grimace on face.
Run, Ian, run!
Ian is making squid vol-au-vents, which is something that even Beverly Moss never thought of, and he suggests that jet black food is ‘a bit risqué’. I assume he means ‘risky’, right? Because otherwise I don’t know what to think or where to look. Paul is keen to get as ’70s as possible, and is including prawns. At Home We Have An Aga, on the other hand, is being daring and modern, with chocolate pastry. Oh, in the other one she’s got Parma ham. Order is restored.
But nobody is using a little olive.
‘Vol-au-vents’ is very amusing in Mat’s accent, by the way. It’s like one long glottal stop.
There’s a lot of meat and fish going on in the tent, and I always lose interest a bit when that happens. At least, with the vegetarian-friendly recipes, I can fool myself that I might make them one day. Also, this is veering suspiciously into ‘cooking’ territory, and that ain’t baking. No saucepans, please.
Tamal was inspired by an amazing sandwich. Bless him. Tamal for Prime Minister!
Nadiya’s face while rolling is an absolute joy. You lucky things, you get ANOTHER GIF.
She also seems to spend the whole of this section staring balefully at everyone else. It ain’t going so well for our Nadi. At some point she made a second pastry, but I seem to have been looking the other way when that happened. Mel comes over to whisper that she might want to put some filling somewhere (although it’s not really filling if it’s not filling anything, is it?)
Piping bags have been discarded; bakers are cramming filling in by hand. Nadiya has given up putting anything in at all. And I haven’t got a clue what’s going on here:
It’s all been pretty chaotic. Let the judging begin! I can’t say any of them look especially showstoppery, so just the one from At Home We Have An Aga in the Hall of Fame this week:
Pretty, in the way that an abstract painting is pretty.
At the other end of the spectrum… deconstructed vol-au-vents from Nadiya.
Is this a wind up? (Think about that for a while, and a BRILLIANT pun will be unveiled.)
But, bless her, they love the filling and she has a full-on cry.
Apparently egg yolk dripping down Mary’s hand is a good thing – though it sounds unsanitary to me – because our Mat is Star Baker.
Going home… well, it’s no surprise (even after Nadiya’s catastrophe), and it’s probably for the best for the sake of his nerves and, more to the point, mine. Your apologies broke my heart. We’ve loved having you, Alvin, you’re fab!
I’ve got a new phone, and everything happens more quickly! It also enables me to join the world of Instagram, and I am definitely not being a responsible user so far. I’m hoping to make it more of a book-centric place (see below for an image of my bookshelves that went up yesterday! #nofilter and all that) but it’s also a personal one, so there will be a bit of a mix. Anyway, Instagram users, make yourself known so I can explore it more! It’s @simondavidthomas.
I know that instagram is having huge potential. I will be able to grow my instagram handle quickly with Nitreo. So I will able to reach huge audience and can share thoughts from my books. It is just awesome that I will able to communicate with huge number of people whenever i want because of instagram. To know more about ingramer.com, go through our site.
Is ‘freefrom’ week a first for Great British Bake Off? I think it might be. What’s not new is Sue and Mel talking nonsensically before the opening titles. A strange joke about rubbing someone down in silver foil, and we’re ready to go.
And what else is not new? The cameraman is still finding ever more inexplicable ways to obscure the contestants as they walk in.
Would it kill them to have a shot where we can just, y’know, SEE the bakers?
Ian, apparently in the belief that pride comes before GOOD stuff, talks about how brilliant he is and, lols, the other bakers hate him.
All in good fun, we think, until, one-by-one, the other bakers confirm that they want Ian dead. Tamal starts off his day trip to the 1990s by saying he thinks Ian is making the other bakers ‘look a bit pants’ – the first time any of us have heard the word ‘pants’ used in this way since about 1998. And Nadiya turns her ever-exaggerated facial expressions to menacing.
Easily the least convincing is Alvin, who laughs nervously at the very thought of being menacing.
#BlazerWatch (yes I hashtagged it, what of it?) is a riot of springtime colours. I’m pretty sure Sue is recycling a jacket here, and Mel has gone eye-shriekingly yellow. Mary, as per usjz, comes out on top.
I’m not going to mention Paul until he starts wearing blazers again. One word, though: CUFFS.
They’re making ‘sugarfree cakes’. I give that inverted commas because THESE ARE NOT SUGARFREE CAKES. I don’t understand whose dietary requirements these cakes could possibly suit. Loads of them are adding honey or syrup ‘instead’ of sugar. BUT HONEY AND SYRUP ARE MOSTLY SUGAR. There’s something about refined or unrefined sugar, which rather goes over my head, but what these cakes are NOT is sugarfree. ARGH.
Mary (in a lovely little garden – her giardino segreto, perhaps) tells us that sugar is an important ingredient in a cake. Whip out your notebooks, boys and girls, we’re doing some learnings.
“Also add flour, probably. Where’s my cheque?”
Over with Paul, he’s saying that some of the bakers will use fruit – but that apples and pears should be avoided because (a) Cockneys will get confused, and (b) they don’t carry enough flavour. Instead, he suggests, they should use ‘something more robust, like an orange, like a lemon’. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he suggests sweetening their cakes with a lemon.
As though to spite him, our first baker – Ian – is using pear. He’s also throwing in carrots and honey. Mat, meanwhile, who looks ever increasingly like Postman Pat, is making a fairly traditional carrot cake, and doesn’t even seem to be adding any form of melted sugar as his sugarfree ingredient. Good on you, Mat.
I love me a carrot cake, and Paul’s sounds delish too – pecans and sultanas are also being added. More importantly – is Paul-the-baker the ghost of Paul-Hollywood-past? He seems to get paler every week.
“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”
“A good polenta cake is worth having,” says Mary to Tamal. Interestingly, WordPress thinks ‘polenta’ is a typo, and offers ‘tadpole’ as the only correction.
Alvin is making a pineapple upside-down cake. “It’s simple; classic,” he says, clearly already wracked with anxiety lest it be too boring. “It’s my go-too!” he confides to the camera, then laughs in a moment of unnerving hysteria.
Bless him.
Ugne has decided (possibly realising that these cakes aren’t free from anything at all) to make hers gluten free as well. We get a bizarre moment of Sue saying ‘hello?!’ in astonishment, practically waggling her glasses up and down Eric Morecambe-style. How does Mary Berry feel about it?
Mary Berry Reaction Face says… no.
Ugne threatens to use purple icing.
At Home We Have An Aga (and, let me be clear, I’m very fond of her – the nickname is only in jest, but is too far gone now to be changed) has made at least four tiers to her cake, and joins the putting-in-oven montage that we’ve come to expect. If my oven had three shelves, it wouldn’t have taken five hours to make the Windtorte.
“I am putting them in the oven,” she says, accurately.
Nadiya is making no-cook blueberry jam for the centre of her cake, which doesn’t only seem to be no-cook but also no-blueberry. It apparently consists entirely of basil seeds (c.f. fig.1) and water.
Her sweetener is molasses. WHICH IS BASICALLY SUGAR.
At Home We Have An Aga is making madeleines to go around the outside of her cake. The takes me back. BA-DOOM-TISH. But, seriously, she always seems to go the extra mile, but still hasn’t made it to Star Baker contention territory.
It only feels like a moment since cakes-in montage, and we’re ready for cakes-out montage. Despite the tension-building drums, nothing of note happens here. Nothing, that is, except for the case for dismissal growing against medical larcenist Tamal.
To make matters worse, he’s injecting blood orange.
He says it’s 50% one thing, 50% some other thing, and a bit of something else – sweetly corrects his 50%/50% statement, and sighs “Ahhh… maths”. Somewhere, Mr Simpson is eyebrows-raised, hoping for a mention. I’ve got your back, Mr S.
Most of the tent are making mascarpone icing (‘mascarpone’ being another word WordPress can’t cope with; ‘mascara’ this time). I do have a question about Tamal’s (and probably most people’s). Why do they insist on using a food mixer thingummy for EVERYTHING.
I said this last year, but I don’t own one of these. I can see where it would sometimes be useful, but bakers should be quite capable of making icing or a sponge mix by hand. Is there some sort of covert sponsorship deal going on? Am I going to bring down the BBC? Can I get a refund on the licence fee I paid last week?
Meanwhile, Alvin is spreading honey on his (to me) rather underwhelming-looking upside-down cake. And he’s done. He nervously asks Ian if his cake is too simple, a question which Ian wisely pretends not to hear.
He’s got THIRTY MINUTES left.
I don’t think there’s any connection with Ugne saying “If we play it safe, it would be boring. We can do boring every day.” But the editing is undoubtedly unfortunate, pitting the tent’s scariest (though also lovely) baker against its most anxious. At least Alv is spending his time well:
“Any clothes need ironing? Any flowerbeds need weeding?”
And – OH NOOOS – Ugne’s cake starts to collapse. She blames it on the top layer breaking, but that doesn’t seem to explain why the whole thing is subsiding, oozing whatever bizarre purple concoction she has smothered it in, as well as the top layer of chocolate. She decides the best course of action is to stand in front of an open fridge, prodding it with a spatula.
What you see here is Nadiya getting halfway through an expression of concern, then shrugging and wandering off.
The editor cruelly goes between the wonderful looking cakes (Ian’s with flowers embedded all around looks particularly impressive) to Ugne’s mess. She’s raided the garden for some decoration that she has decided (in a moment, we must sympathetically assume, of insanity) might distract from the apocakelypse.
Here are some prettier ones:
Tamal does well, as does Paul. Bizarrely, they think Ian’s might look too simple (?!) and ‘pear’s not going to bring anything to a party in a sugarfree cake’. Paul says Mat’s doesn’t look baked, but it turns out it is, and thus ends the shortest emotional rollercoaster in history.
Ugne’s checkerboard doesn’t come out quite as she’d hoped, and I hope this also serves as a warning to anybody who was considering browny-purple as an icing colour choice in future:
Brilliantly, Mel starts chomping on the accompanying flowers – only to be told that they’re not edible. She subtly spits them out.
They don’t seem to mind too much that Alvin’s cake is super dull; instead, he gets tidal waves of compliments from M & P. These are the same people who thought that Ian’s was too simple. Paul-the-baker nods appreciatively. And, in the aftermath-interviews, Ian is NOT CHUFFED.
Technical challenge time! And it might be the least appetising one to date. Gluten-free pittas. Nadiya is all of us:
“…wut?”
Pittas join the pantheon of GBBO technical bakes that in no way reward the effort required. Just buy them from a shop, people. Even Paul’s array of pre-made pittas look soporifically dull.
I pitta the fool who has to eat these.
It’s the first of many times we’ll see Mary make a pocket in a pitta. If you thought her fixation on violets was ridiculous, wait til you discover how obsessed she is with wearing pittas as gloves.
They’ve all got packets of brown powder but, fear not, this isn’t more of Tamal stealing from work. It’s something that, mixed with water, takes the place of gluten, or something. When I’ve made gluten-free things, I’ve just used gluten-free flour. May I recommend it as a preferred method? Oh, and Tamal, not content with the patois of 1998, rewinds a few years more to describe the mixture as ‘rank’.
I mean, he’s not wrong.
They all seem to be doing surprisingly well with the dough, though. It’s very soggy, but they’ve made admirable-looking doughs – as this shot, taken from under Ugne’s arm, demonstrates:
Oh, Tamal’s isn’t going so well. Poor old Alv has had pitta once in his life, and recalls it looking like ‘a triangle’. Sue blanches, but womanfully says nothing. Is he thinking of a samosa? Is he saying words at random?
This panning shot, rushing through the flowers, literally made me feel dizzy.
The bakers and voiceovers are mercifully brief on the topic of proving, and Alvin runs through every conceivable shape for his pitta, before openly copying those around him.
“Grey and dense” says Mat, popping his head up from behind the desk, and making my jokes too obvious. Also, where is his accent from? He sounds like somebody pretending to be Northern, while chewing toffee. And Ockham’s Razor suggests that that’s what he must be.
There is nothing interesting about these pittas, visually at least. We see them wrapped in tea towels (why?), plonked on boards, and eventually lined up on the gingham altar. A last minute blow on hers renders Ugne’s entirely unhygienic.
The judging? Well, friends, AT NO POINT TO MARY OR PAUL EAT ANY OF THEM. It’s so strange. Do they note their colour and shape? Yes. Do they wave them up and down? Yes. Do they shove their hands in them? Hell, yes. But they never taste them. Why? (Also: repetitive mentions of ‘envelope’ spark interest from Postman Mat.) My favourite moment is Mary saying “These are round, aren’t they?” in wonderment, and apparently needing confirmation from Paul’s expertise on this point.
The world’s dullest technical over, and Alvin comes last, followed by Tamal and Ugne. The top three are At Home We Have An Aga, Paul, and Nadiya. I think Nadiya is pleased.
#ChetnaArms
You know what *I* miss, folks? Home videos. We haven’t had one in weeks. They’re really wasting having a fire fighter and an anaesthetist on the squad, not to mention a student. At Home We Have An Aga probably writes on the floor, or something, like Ruby. Ugne is a body-builder, for Heaven’s sake. What do you need, GBBO producers, before you’ll show us awkward three-second clips, filmed in the rain, of people presenting Victoria sponges to their assembled family and colleagues?
Back in the tent, it’s the showstopper challenge: dairy-free ice cream rolls. The very notion. Let’s be honest, they know that ice cream gave them their best ratings last year, and they’re hoping to recapture the magic. To do judges and presenters justice, #bingate is not mentioned, even covertly. Unless it was SO covert that I didn’t spot it.
The bakers are mostly using coconut milk, which comes in BBC-friendly non-brand tins.
It always seems like anything they’re thinking of making might turn out to be scrambled eggs if things go wrong. Every recipe is one false step away from being scrambled eggs. It’s a humbling thought.
Alvin is using a Filipino ingredient that Paul compares to suncream – and Mary, getting her own back for the hair-dye comment of last week, suggests it’s what he’s been using for years. That man does love a tan. Alvin’s looks unappealingly luminous in the BBC Colouring Pencils evocation of it.
Soylent Green?
Mel gets the green stuff on her tongue because of course she does. Bless her. Paul-the-baker is making a dessert island – geddit? Dessert/desert? Geddit? [wipes eyes]. A few people are going tropical, indeed, with pineapples and mangoes all over the place.
Oh, hark, they’ve found a xylophone.
Ugne is making a peanut butter ice cream *gag* with grape jam *gag* and the whole thing sounds revolting. Her ‘I need this to work today’ is followed by a laugh, but I think we can all still agree that it’s the horse’s-head-in-bed of comments.
Ian’s doing a… dessert island. It’s the joke that just keeps on giving.
Nadiya says of her mousse that she’s putting it in the freezer, because leaving it out will make it too runny. Could THIS be the #bingate reference I’ve been waiting for?
Apparently forgetting his – now, how to put this nicely – horrendous piping on the biscuit box, Paul-the-baker is making wobbly palm trees and… shuttlecocks?… to decorate his sponge roll.
My friend Adam plays a GBBO drinking game which includes drinking when bakers stare into ovens. He was in my house when this episode was on, and we didn’t happen to have any alcohol in, otherwise this montage would have left him unconscious.
Oh no no no.
Alvin is a bit fraught, and we get a shot of Paul-the-baker staring in consternation at him, in silence, before reluctantly saying “D’you want a hand, Alvin?” He looks and sounds precisely like Phil Mitchell at this point.
To give him credit, he does then lend a hand.
I’ve also skimmed (or at least semi-skimmed #hahaha #ohnohedidnt) over the final section of the challenge, as it’s mostly people taking things in and out of ovens, or in and out of freezers. It does include Sue pointing out the flaws in Ugne’s jam placement, suggesting that she’s picked up quite a bit in her years on the show.
The less said about Paul-the-baker’s fondant sunbather, the better. Let’s not sully ourselves, people.
Ian has a mini breakdown, and can’t remember the word ‘marzipan’. In this strange tent of savoury and sweet being entirely interchangeable, his suggestion of ‘parmesan’ wouldn’t actually be that scandalous. (And, oh, WordPress spellchecker, I do mean parmesan, and not partisan.)
And, just like that, we’re finished. Here are a couple of the beauties:
This doesn’t show off the lovely bunting properly. Everybody loves bunting.This is truly spectacular. Well done, Nadi!
Highlights:
Mary says she’d be proud if she’d managed to make Tamal’s.
Mat didn’t realise that a Swiss roll and an ice cream roll were different things.
Nadiya’s is undeniably wonderful, but it’s curious that Mary congratulated her chocolate ice cream for ‘masking’ the coconut.
Alvin continues to call Paul ‘sir’. I don’t really like it.
Ugne’s is a mess, but tastes good, and (bless her) she has a little cry.
Mary, Paul, Mel, and Sue debrief while the bakers loll about in deck chairs, each and every one of them looking grumpy – I know I would be after a day like that. Then we’re ready for them to unveil Star Baker…
Hearty cheers all round! Fans of the adorable will enjoy Nadiya talking about how her kids will be proud of her.
And going home…
She whispers something to Sue – could it be “I won’t forget this”? – and definitely looks like she’s strangling her… but, I jest, she was a sweetie really.
Well, I’ll be spending my weekend writing a conference paper for the Elizabeth von Arnim conference which is (ahem) next weekend. Excellent planning, Si. I’m speaking about Father, which (since Virago didn’t reprint it during their flurry of E von A reprints) isn’t particularly well known – but it’s rather fab. More on that soon; for now, a book, a blog post, and a link.
1.)The book – I’ve been meaning to read it for ages, but since I haven’t managed it yet, I thought I’d just let you know it exists. It’s 43 writers writing about how much they love reading. Blissful, no? Thanks Bloomsbury for sending me a copy – I am really looking forward to finding time to read it.
Bake Off recap coming soon, but I thought I’d show the Spanische Windtorte that my housemate Kirsty and I made after watching last week’s show. We used Mary Berry’s recipe and, let me tell you, it took HOURS. Five of them, to be precise.
Not as elegant as the ones on the show, but we were pretty pleased with our efforts! And it was rather yummy. (Just don’t tell Mary that we bought the edible flowers pre-made.)
I’ve borrowed this image from Karyn, who reviewed it here: http://tinyurl.com/qhpbmxc (Hope that’s ok, Karyn!)
It’s no secret that I’m a longstanding fan of the Mitfords – or, at least, of reading about them. Debo has an eternal place in my heart, but, even though none of the others quite made it there, I still adored reading the letters betweenall six sisters. The one whom I didn’t much like (besides Unity, obvs, though her regression after shooting herself is fascinating to see in letter-form) was Jessica. I was chastised. I was told I should read her letters and her books, and that thus I would come to like her more. Finally – FINALLY – I have read Hons and Rebels (1960). Do I like her more? Maybe.
I’ll get in there early: if I were writing a scholarly book review, whether or not I like the woman would be completely immaterial. And here, as with a novel, it isn’t the be all and end all. But if it is acceptable to cheer on a biography because you like the writer so much (heart you, Debo), then it’s equally acceptable to do the reverse. On the same page? Fabs.
In actual fact, Jessica (or Decca, as she was known) comes across very sympathetically. Partly this is because of my political leanings, I daresay. I don’t fall as far left as Decca, but I’m pretty much a lefty – and we can all agree to band against the Fascist and Nazi beliefs of Diana and Unity Mitford. There are some pretty extraordinary descriptions of Decca and Unity setting up their shared bedroom into a Fascist and Communist split, with posters advocating their own politics on either side. It would be amusing if Unity’s views were not so extreme.
I was expecting a biography of the eccentric Mitford childhood we (mostly) all know well. The sort of thing we found in Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love – with the hons in the cupboard, the father hunting the children, and the various codes. Spoilers: it is not. We do see some of Decca’s childhood – but by the time she was around in the nursery, her older siblings were more or less adults. Just Unity, Debo, and Decca were left around – and it is the three of them who formed various bonds and antipathies.
This section of the book I loved, even without the full line-up of Mitfords. We see, for instance, them being dragged around by the Conservative Party – ‘Our car was decorated with Tory blue ribbons, and if we should pass a car flaunting the red badge of Socialism, we were allowed to lean out of the window and shout at the occupants: “Down with the horrible Counter-Honnish Labour Party!”.’ We get a child’s-eye-view of the various scandals Nancy causes. Mostly, we get a taste of Decca’s thirst for independence, particularly in her longing to go to school and her storing-up of a Running Away Fund.
That fund turns out not to be as whimsical as it sounds. Very young, she rushes off to the Spanish Civil War. For those who think the Mitfords were rich gentry who never stepped down from their thrones to put their money where their mouths were (to mix metaphors) – Hons and Rebels is an education. We are many miles from the Cotswolds as we see the intrepid Decca follow her cousin Esmond Romilly to Spain, facing hardship, opposition, and – yes – romance. It shows the extraordinary person Decca was, for better or worse.
But the Cotswolds get even further around as the book progresses – as Decca moves to America. Here’s an example both of her early sheltered life, and the wit with which she writes. It is often a very amusing book.
My own impressions of Americans had been culled from various sources, ranging from books read in childhood, such as Little Women and What Katy Did, to Hemingway and movies. I knew that they lived on strange and rather unappetizing-sounding foods called squash, grits, hot dogs, and corn pudding. On the other hand, cookies sounded rather delicious. I visualized them as little cakes made in the shape of cooks with sugar-icing aprons and hats. From seeing The Petrified Forest, I gathered that Americans often made love under tables while gangster bullets whizzed through the air.
I’ve given enough plot for this book, so shan’t tell you all that happens in America – but, suffice to say, Esmond and Decca go through some difficult conditions and she writes about them winningly and wittily. A stray and dispassionate footnote on the penultimate page alerts us to why this memoir is particularly moving – but I’ll allow you to find that out for yourself.
So, in brief – it is fascinating, and certainly well told. The only reason I didn’t love Hons and Rebels as much as I could have done is because I was expecting something else – I missed hearing about the rest of the family (who are more or less absent for the second half of the book), and wondered quite what they were thinking about her. The feeling I got from the letters, that she rather abandoned them, is quietly reflected here – not by what she says about them, but by the fact that they are seldom mentioned. And that is a terrible reason to put something in the ‘cons’ column of a book review. But, Mitford-fanatic that I am, I can’t help it, and thought I should warn fellow enthusiasts. But this issue aside (as it should be), Hons and Rebels is an extraordinary book. When I read the sequel (A Fine Old Conflict), I shall better prepare myself for the book Decca wrote, rather than the one I wish she’d written.
Welcome to desserts week, everyone! It’s one of those times when we all pretend that ‘desserts’ isn’t being spread out to cover four different episodes. The definition is so loose that even Diana’s pastry triangles might make the grade.
The ‘here’s what will happen in this episode’ makes the classic tiers/tears joke, so we’re off to a good start. Other than that, we just get Mel and Sue – standing in Sue-and-Mel order to confuse my friend Hannah – under umbrellas in the rain. While this is at least played for comic effect, you’ll see the poor bakers in similarly damp conditions throughout the rest of the episode, with no obvious reason why they couldn’t simply do the interviews indoors.
“…why?”
Some lovely folk got in touch to confirm that they do, indeed, value and appreciate Blazer Watch. And… here they are! Mary outdoes herself; Mel and Sue return to form; Paul – even in the rain – refuses to don a blazer.
He’s sent blazers to blazes, as it were.
The first challenge is making creme brulee, which seems custom-designed to wreak havoc with my finding-accents-on-my-computer. Well, GBBO bosses, you underestimated how lazy I am. So we’re going to get ‘creme brulee’ throughout this segment, and you can imagine the correct French. Just borrow one of At Home We Have An Aga’s cookbooks, if necessary.
The bakers get out bowls, break eggs, and look important – while, baffingly, Mat wags his finger at the floor.
Incidentally, my biggest surprise this series is how little they’re making of the fact that Mat is a fireman EVEN in a week where fire is mentioned plenty. Could it be because he looks a little like Postman Pat? Could it?
Paul and Mary tell us about creme brulees outside – where it has miraculously stopped raining – and Mary declares that there weren’t such things as blow torches when she has a wee lass. As several people have pointed out, blow torches go back to 1791, so… yup, this adds up.
“Of course, fire wasn’t invented until I was in my 40s.”
As with Madeira cake, I’m off the traditionalist opinion that creme brulees should be creme brulee flavoured, and there’s no need to mess around with other additions. That being said, I’m a sucker for coconut and lime at any time.
Which Mat is apparently baking in conch shells.
Then again, I really love liquorice, but the idea of putting it in a creme brulee is anathema to me.
Four or five different bakers tell us that the cream/eggs mixture shouldn’t be too hot, and we’re treated to shots with this finesse:
That’s Ugne’s hair, by the way. She is using some fermented fruit from Africa that is basically Bailey’s, and Mezza immediately threatens to get off her face on it. Anxious Alvin, meanwhile, has been trialling his creme brulees on hospital staff – who have been merrily criticising it, apparently. Colouring Pencils Man gets a bit off with perspective, and it looks like Alvin will be serving his with some red fungi.
And – sigh – gold leaf. Stop it with the gold leaf, people.
He’s also apparently left some edible pansies on the train, and is waiting for them to arrive. How? Is some poor production skivvy been sent off in a taxi to hound the good people of First Great Western until a box of crystallized flowers rematerializes? Or did some bright spark, knowing how often edible pansies would appear in this episode, thoughtfully fling them out a window?
Nadiya is making something she’s tried before “without success”, and then says it was “fun”, with this expression on her face:
The cameraman has borrowed Tamal’s shaking hands, and we get an aptly wobbily shot of him pouring custard into ramikins. The shaking does make it feel like we’re stalkers peering through somebody’s kitchen window – which, given the camera’s propensity to linger behind shrubs, is at least consistent.
“It’s all down to the poaching,” says Paul. Is it? Poaching surely something different you do with eggs? Am I missing something?
Meanwhile, Mary is finding more alcohol to down.
Apparently a bain-marie is used to stop the custard being heated at more than 100 degrees (as that, of course, is as hot as water can get). Wouldn’t putting the oven at 100 degrees have the same effect? I don’t know.
Much talk of made of ‘wobble’, and there are desperate attempts to make this sound euphemistic – most awkwardly in an exchange between Mat and Ugne which, thankfully, Ugne doesn’t seem to hear. She just says “hot hot hot”.
Sue gets Sandy to demonstrate the perfect wobble, and my heart just wishes Nancy were in this clip instead.
The camera pans jerkily towards Mat drinking a cup of tea; Nadiya makes helpful comments to Paul-the-baker (“are they meant to crack?”); At Home We Have An Aga has decided to make tuilles as well as creme brulees, for no clear reason. With dim memories of Hula Hoops presumably in mind, Mel mocks up tuille cuffs – and is sternly chastised by Paul and Mary.
We see various bakers sprinkle sugar on their brulees. While Alvin does this, a background shot makes the eventual judging make much more sense.
Yes, Sandy has confused the freezer with the oven.
In Ugne’s long line of creepy things to say to camera, she turns and says simply “burning flesh!”
Sandy does an impression of David Attenborough that sounds, as always, exactly like Victoria Wood.
Despite my reservations regarding creme brulees having unusual flavours, the spread does look very impressive. Some people have scrambled eggs; some people have runny custard; some are heartily congratulated on their consistency. Tamal does a little victory fist shake that he instantly thinks better of, and it forms a perfect three-second portrayal of embarrassment and regret. Guys… I made an animated GIF! The future is now.
Paul tells Ian that he has issues with his pomegranate – somebody’s been reading their Greek myths – but the harshest criticism is reserved for Sandy. She insists that her runny creme brulees were in the oven for the right length of time. “Was it on?” replies Paul, in the closest thing to wit that he’s ever achieved.
Once Paul has had a couple of hours to lie down, to recover from his Wildean parry, we’re ready for the technical challenge. Mary advises them all to read the recipe carefully and visualise what they should be creating, and Sue sends M & P off to an inter-generational foam party in Woking – which, against my better judgement, does make me snigger. Not so much their puns on ‘wind’ – they’re making Spanish Wind Torte. They’re really running low on actual real things to bake, aren’t they?
It has Italian meringue and French meringue, I think. In conversation with my bestie Mel about this, we wondered whether every country had its own meringue. “Is there a British meringue, and a Spanish meringue?” queried Mel. “Merengue is the Spanish meringue,” quoth I, wittily.
This is apparently what it should look like. Pay attention to those violets; they will become the only aspect that Mary gives a damn about.
“Have you ever seen a violet?” Sue asks Alvin.
“I think it’s a flower,” he responds. Good luck, matey.
Paul-the-baker, meanwhile, just says “violet violet violet violet” over and over to himself. You might call that speech ultra-violet. Thankyouverymuch.
“It’s the most feminine version of plastering you can imagine, isn’t it?” says At Home We Have An Aga – and, somewhere, Richard from Series Five is yelling “I’M A BUILDER!” at his TV screen.
This dimly reminds me of that awful 100-layer pancake-cake from last year, only it looks a darn sight more appealing. The structural integrity of all the tortes is impressing me. Everybody seems to have made nice meringue layers and sturdy towers. Yes, Sandy put her cake stand in the oven, but what of it? Why wouldn’t she put her cake stand in the oven? Think of it that way.
She’s also decided that the best way to make a disc is to break it in half. I didn’t catch the beginning of this process on my first watch, and thought it had cracked by accident – but, no, she has deliberately sabotaged her own torte.
She doesn’t even give a good reason for it. “It should be slightly… shppsh,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. And then she rams it into the oven tray, like so:
This time it’s apparently not deliberate, but the line between the things she does deliberately and the things she does by accident is so blurred as to be non-existent.
The same could be said of Sue, who gives Alvin an aggressive massage that can’t possibly be pleasant.
He takes his usual tactic of ignoring her completely.
Mel makes an awesome “Meringue, m’lord?” joke; Sue points out to Sandy that discs tend to be flat; the whole brass section of the orchestra pomp pomp to their hearts’ content, and the line-up of tortes are ready for inspection.
For some reason, Sandy’s cracked disc doesn’t bother Paul and Mary at all – “interesting lid” is all the comment it gets – and then we spend the next few minutes hearing Mary obsess about the shape, size, and delicacy of the violets, to the exclusion of all other criteria. The word ‘violet’ lost all meaning for me in the middle of this segment. (Incidentally, where did the fondant come for these? Could it have been… shop bought?!) Alvin comes last, followed by Nadiya and Mat. The top three are At Home We Have An Aga, Ugne, and Paul. Even Paul only gets “a good attempt at the flowers” from Mary. She really cares about those flowers. Like, time-to-call-an-intervention cares.
The usual anybody-could-be-in-danger interview with Paul and Mary, and we’re onto a three-tier cheesecake challenge for the showstoppers. They should be sweet, not savoury, says Sue – which is (a) something that should be taken as read, and (b) quickly disregarded by the bakers. For instance, Ian is making ‘spicy and herby’ cheesecakes. NO. NO. NO. This madness must stop.
NO.
Rosemary does not belong in a cheesecake, to clarify. Tamal is also going the rosemary route – the FOOL – and has apparently kept some violets from earlier.
He calls himself a doctor, yet he aids her addiction like this.
Alvin knows what’s up. He’s using lemon, berries, and other cheesecake flavours. Good man. Nadiya has made her flavours from boiled-down fizzy drinks, which is… good, I guess? Paul has stopped listening to people at this stage, and just says “good luck” automatically to every baker when the people around him have stopped talking for a bit.
Paul-the-baker is adding brandy and vodka. Mary dribbles at the thought.
Apparently Sue, Paul, and Mary have never heard the word ‘ombre’, which is baffling. Ugne explains that it is often found in relation to hair dye; Paul makes a joke about Mary’s, and she responds simply with ‘careful’. It’s glorious. She can be stern when she needs to be.
At Home We Have An Aga is making three elderflower cheesecakes – unlike everybody else, as they’re using as many flavours as humanly possible. Being At Home We Have An Aga, she decides to whip together some macarons to enhance her bake. Apparently those ingredients are just lying around.
“Oh, these? I just had these on me.”
We haven’t had a lot of Mary Berry Reaction Faces this episode, but she gives a good’un when Mat explains that he wants his cheesecake to ‘explode a little bit’.
We get a montage of bakers taking cheesecakes out of tins, which culminates in Alvin apparently taking an invisible cheesecake out of his.
“Well, it’s very light…”
Cheesecakes are piled on top of one another, some with pernicious bits of plastic wedged in between layers. Sandy opts for covering one in silver foil (why?) and leaving one on the side. Tamal does her best to help her, but…
There are some impressive looking cheesecakes, folks. Ian’s and Tamal’s look lovely. but I refuse to condone the herby/spicy approach to cheesecakes. Not on my watch. And one of Tamal’s layers looks curiously like it’s made of tuna.
Paul gets to his ignore-them-and-they’ll-go-away peak during the backstage pre-elimination discussion.
“I hate you so, so much.”
Star baker – well, it looked like it should be Tamal, to me, but it’s…
And, going home, not very surprisingly after a pretty shoddy week, is…
I will never have the opportunity to decide whether or not she is a Nancy-impersonator.
Hope you’ve enjoyed dessert week – see you next time!
This is one of those rare, rare occasions where I’ve actually joined in with a reading week/month etc. at the right time, and with the book I intended to read! I’m sneaking into the end of August to celebrate Women in Translation Month, hosted by Meytal/Biblibio.
One of my favourite writers is a woman in translation (in translation when I read her, at least): Tove Jansson. I could have re-read one of hers, or explored the Moomins more, but I decided to kill two birds with one stone and read a book with food as a theme – which is on my Book Bingo scorecard. And, embarrassingly, I’ve had The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery on my shelf since 2010, when I was given it as a review copy by Gallic Books. It was originally published in French in 2000, and translated by Alison Anderson for this 2009 edition.
Perhaps one of the reasons it had stayed on mount tbr for so long was that I hadn’t been entirely enamoured by the Barbery that everyone has read: The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I thought it was rather overwritten (either by author or translator, or both) and couldn’t quite see why it was so praised. I was rather snarky about it. So, how would I fare with this one?
First things first: the concept. It’s an intriguing idea. A celebrated food critic is dying, and longs to capture a taste from his past. It was the most delicious food he’d ever eaten, but – since it came before the days of his knowledge and fame – he can’t remember what it was. Around him, his adoring but poorly-treated wife, his rightfully resentful children, and his fantastic cat, wait for the end to come…
Pierre Arthens is a monstrous character. Monstrously selfish, monstrously uncaring (he doesn’t feel any guilt at not loving his children), and monstrously single-minded in pursuit of food. All this makes him a fascinating character, and easily the most interesting one in the book. Barbery made the decision to give alternate chapters from his point of view, while the other alternate chapters come from a wide variety of characters, most of whom only get heard from once. That was rather a flaw, I thought; it’s just not interesting to hear the in-depth thoughts of a person whose not been heard of before or since. I ended up skimming the non-Pierre chapters, and waiting to hear more about his culinary (and other) experiences throughout his life. It’s mostly musings, rather than plot, but it works well from his self-obsessed persona.
And the writing? I still found it a little overwritten at times. Again, I don’t know whether it’s Barbery or Anderson (I assume Anderson conveyed the sort of writing Barbery chose), but there’s no excuse for sections like this:
The cave of treasures: this was it, the perfect rhythm, the shimmering harmony between portions, each one exquisite unto itself, but verging on the sublime by virtue of strict, ritual succession. The meatballs, grilled with the utmost respect for their firmness, had lost none of their succulence during their passage through fire, and filled my professionally carnivorous mouth with a thick, warm, spicy, juicy wave of masticatory pleasure.
Shudder. But, for the most part, I could cope with the overblown rhetoric – it worked for the character. In fact, if I hadn’t read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I might not have noticed it as much.
I don’t think I embraced all aspects of Arthens’ culinary memories as much as I have done, but that’s because most of the luscious descriptions are about meat and fish, which don’t appeal to this vegetarian. The odd moments when, say, asparagus took his fancy, I could enjoy it rather more.
So, has this Woman in Translation become a firm favourite? No, but I enjoyed reading the book, and certainly like Muriel Barbery more now than I did before.
Have you joined in Woman in Translation month? If not… it’s not too late!
Well, I’ll be spending my weekend writing a conference paper for the Elizabeth von Arnim conference which is (ahem) next weekend. Excellent planning, Si. I’m speaking about Father, which (since Virago didn’t reprint it during their flurry of E von A reprints) isn’t particularly well known – but it’s rather fab. More on that soon; for now, a book, a blog post, and a link.
