Hey all! I’ll be limiting my blogging activity until RSI has gone down, as I’m trying to keep to essential typing (like, erm, the conference paper I’m supposed to be writing this weekend). See you soon, hopefully, but here’s a song from Kathryn Williams’ awesome album Hypoxia, which is all about Sylvia Plath.
All
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
Writing with one hand at the moment, for various boring health reasons, which is why you’re likely to get a few short posts from me for the time being. Including this Shiny New Books link to an excellent novel by Vita Sackville-West. The more I read by her, the more I think her social history has unjustly overshadowed her writing – and The Edwardians was her bestseller. And while you’re there, check out Five Fascinating Facts about VSW.
While Vita Sackville-West is today best remembered as having (probably) been the lover of Virginia Woolf, and as the mind behind the garden at Sissinghurst, she was also a novelist of repute during her life. Indeed, The Edwardians – now republished alongside All Passion Spent by Vintage, both with Gosia Herba’s striking cover designs – was such a phenomenal seller that it helped keep Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s publishing house, Hogarth Press, afloat. Has this 1930 novel stood the test of time? Short answer: absolutely. It is somehow both riotous and thoughtful, borrowing from the modernists without losing its popular touch.
The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
I think I’d seen two different versions of the film The Lady Vanishes (the Hitchcock and the remake) before I knew it was a novel, and after that I tried to keep an eye out for it in bookshops. There was the small issue that at no point could I remember the title or the author. Even writing the heading to this post, I wasn’t sure whether it was The Wheel Spins or The Wheel Turns. Hitchcock knew what he was doing when he changed the title.
With my unreliable memory, I don’t recall the exact ins and outs of this adaptations, so I can’t say precisely how the book differs, but there certainly seemed to be some difference in tone. But I shan’t assume any prior knowledge on the part of the reader, you’ll be pleased to know. And we’ll quietly forget the films for the time being, excellent though they are.
Iris Carr starts off the novel coming to the end of a luxurious Italian holiday with a group of friends who are lively or obnoxiously boisterous, depending on whom you ask at the hotel. They head off back to England a little before she does, and she is left to ignore the other residents – from the vicar and wife who are keen to tell anybody about their children to the spinster ladies who strongly disapprove of youthful insouciance. They, in turn, are quite keen to keep out of anybody else’s business, for somewhat unlikely reasons that later become essential to the plot but (more rewardingly, to my mind) also lead later to my favourite lines in the book:
“You live in Somersetshire,” he remarked. “It is a county where I have stayed often. I wonder if we know any mutual friends.”
“I hate every single person living there,” said Miss Rose vehemently, sweeping away any claimants to friendship.
Iris, let us be honest, is not a particularly sympathetic woman. She seems unrepentantly selfish, quite rude, and snubs the overtures of friendship that are offered. She hopes, indeed, to travel back to England without them – but they do all end on the same train after all.
She is not, however, in their carriage – instead, after a curious incident of being knocked out briefly on the train platform – she squeezes herself into a carriage next to a friendly middle-aged lady, Miss Froy, and a peculiarly unfriendly set of others – including a formidable-looking baroness. Miss Froy is something of an adventurer (not, I assure you, an adventuress) and babbles away cheerily to Iris about her travel and exploits. It may not surprise you to learn that her response is to be pretty bored and inattentive, but she puts up with it for a while.
After Iris has had a quick nap, she wakes up to discover Miss Froy is missing… and when she asks the people in the carriage, they deny having ever seen her.
It’s an excellent premise for a novel (or a film), but it does require watertight plotting. At no point do we ever truly believe that Iris has imagined any of this – which I seem to recall felt like a possibility in the film – so, instead, we have to try to work out where Miss Froy is, and why everybody is lying.
One of those is answered very well (if not entirely unguessably – it felt obvious to me, knowing what happened, but perhaps it might not have done if I’d not seen the film); the other had a fair few holes, but none that let the novel down overall. And that was because White writes both engagingly and well. Indeed, her prose is more fluid, witty, and accomplished than many of the detective novelists of the period that I have read.
If her characterisation tends to caricature at times, she demonstrates greater nuance in Iris – who is an impressively believable combination of damsel in distress and determined sleuth, picking the most realistic elements from both stereotypes to create a non-stereotypical character. She actually behaves in a way that one might believe a person would behave, unlike 90% of thrillers – for The Wheel Spins often feels like it has crossed the line into thriller territory.
But my favourite elements were closer to normal: Miss Froy has two elderly parents – which came as a surprise, as I’d rather imagined her to be rather elderly herself until they appealed – and the narrative occasionally heads back to England to see them proudly and enthusiastically preparing for Miss F’s return. As is their adorable dog. It is all rather touching, and lends pathos that is often missing from high dramas. You can’t, for example, imagine Bulldog Drummond’s parents flicking through a photo album.
All in all, this is an endearing and enjoyable classic crime that was well-serviced by being turned into a Hitchcock film. Thank you Kirsty for lending it to me!
The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley by Diana Petre
More from Shiny New Books! And it is becoming almost a tradition for me to read one of Slightly Foxed’s beautiful memoirs in almost every issue – this time an author I’d never heard of. It’s a brilliant memoir about a distant mother/daughter relationship – sometimes literally distant – and discovering that someone Diana thought was a family friend was actually her father. And it more of a study of those around her than a memoir, really, as she remains an enigma to the end. Heartily recommend!
As usual, here’s the start of what I wrote, and you can read the whole thing at SNB.
I am always unable to pass on the chance to read a Slightly Foxed Edition and, having re-loved 84, Charing Cross Road in the last issue of Shiny New Books, it was fun to go and read something about which I knew absolutely nothing. Who was Roger Ackerley? Who, for that matter, was Diana Petre? And what was this orchard? The answers weren’t what I was expecting, but this memoir is none the less brilliant for that.
Some books from Brighton
A few weeks ago, I spent a couple of days in Brighton for a conference – and, whilst I was there, managed to persuade my colleagues that what they really wanted was to visit a secondhand bookshop. To do them credit, they did seem to enjoy it, and even bought a book or two – though the armfuls I was carrying around rather dwarfed them.
The bookshop was called Colin Page, and it’s brilliant. Excellent stock, low prices, and a spiral staircase = bliss. Also, the name of the shop also turns out to be the name of an American painter whose work I really, really like, so that was a nice coincidence. But you want to know what I bought, don’t you?
It was quite a quirky and unusual stock, mostly older hardbacks, and I think that was reflected in the books I came away with… Do tell me which you’ve got/read/want/etc.
The Flower-Show Match by Siegfried Sassoon
I grew very fond of Sassoon while reading Anna Thomasson’s A Curious Friendship, and have bought quite a few non-fiction books by him since then – this is my first collection of his prose fiction. I think fiction?
The Author and the Public: Problems of Communication
This is an anthology of different people thinking about the unique relationship between author and public. I have the perfect shelf for this sort of book, of course…
The Writing on the Wall by Mary McCarthy
Literary essays by an author that I have yet to read anything by – but what got this off the shelf and into my hands was the fact that a couple of the essays are about Ivy Compton-Burnett. I will amass anything about Dame Ivy.
Adonis and the Alphabet by Aldous Huxley
SIMON. Read some of the Aldous Huxley books you already have. Yes, I know. BUT ALSO LOOK HOW PRETTY THIS ONE IS. (More book descriptions below the image, of course.)
The Art of Growing Old by John Cowper Powys
I’ve grown more interested in the Powys brothers now that I have father-is-vicar-of-Montacute in common with them; this looks unusual and intriguing.
Muriel Spark – John Masefield
I’ve read lots and lots of Muriel Spark’s novels, but I’ve never read any of her biographies – and have to confess that I’d forgotten she’d even written one of Masefield. It will be intriguing to see if her is similar here to her unmistakably Sparkian novels.
Max Beerbohm in Perspective
I can’t see who wrote this from the image, and the book is all the way across the room… but I keep piling up books by and about Beerbohm, based on having liked one novel and one collection of essays. Here’s hoping I continue to enjoy Max!
The Reading of Books by Holbrook Jackson
Try imagining a world in which I didn’t buy a book with this title. You couldn’t do it, could you?
Mainly on the Air by Max Beerbohm
And there he is…
Also in the bigger image are two books I bought in a charity – House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier (which I had thought I owned, but apparently didn’t) and The Condemned Playground by Cyril Connolly, to follow up my read of Enemies of Promise.
The Story of Alice by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
It’s not all that long til the next issue of Shiny New Books and I am very behind with linking to reviews I wrote in the last issue. And I did want to point out a few – starting with The Story of Alice by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. It’s all about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice Liddell, and Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll. And Robert Douglas-Fairhurst just happened to my undergraduate tutor. So this review sort of covers both those things… starting with this paragraph to lure you in. Read the whole thing over at Shiny New Books!
There are few children’s literary characters who are as well known as Alice et al. From Alice bands to Mad Hatters, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat, and more, these creations have passed beyond the original two books they appeared in and into the wider consciousness. By finding themselves there, the connection to their author has grown hazy and uncertain over the years – was, indeed, always hazy and uncertain. Even the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is more likely to be called Alice in Wonderland. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has the unenviable task of disentangling myth and rumour, finding the roots of Alice in an academic’s room in Oxford – and what he has produced is an enchanting maelstrom of facts, accounts, and possibilities… in which Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) remains, somehow, a little elusive.
Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson
I’m back! In fact, I’ve been back for a while, but took a bit of an extended break so I could pretend that I was still by the seaside. And life is a bit busier than usual at the moment, so I might not be springing back into full flow just yet (can one spring into flow??)…
BUT I wanted to give people the opportunity to read all about Guy Fraser-Sampson’s Death in Profile (2016) over at Vulpes Libris. Here you areeeeeeee.
This, that, and hols
First things first… happy 90th to Queen Elizabeth II!
I’m taking a bit of a blog break for a couple of weeks, as I’m off to Brighton for two days, then down to Cornwall (via Somerset and Sherpa!) for a family holiday. I’m pretty excited about reading these two enormous books…
Before I disappear for a bit, here are a few completely unrelated things to share…
1.) I’m taking part in Brooding About the Brontes with a guest post over at Girl With Her Head in a Book. I get all defensive about Anne Bronte and I quote Iggy Azalea, so there’s that to look forward to.
2.) At some point I’ll do proper posts about Shiny New Books Issue 9, but for now – why not check out 5 Fascinating Facts About Vita Sackville-West?
3.) So sad to hear about the far too early death of Victoria Wood. I don’t know if her audience was as international as it deserved to be, but she is undoubtedly a national treasure here in Britain – and I heartily recommend you spend an evening looking up her best bits of YouTube. Although her highlights would take a week to watch. She was such a master of language.
4.) If you like the ‘Tea or Books?’ theme tune as much as I do, you might have wondered what it was. I don’t think anybody’s ever actually asked, but I’m going to assume it’s the great unspoken question. Anyway, I got the clip from a copyright-free site, and it’s the lovely 1928 recording of ‘Smiling Skies’ by Benny Meroff. Hear a bit more of it in the video below…
#1938Club: a wrap-up
Wow, everyone! What a great week it’s been. The contributions, both in their enthusiasm, number, and variety, have far exceeded everything Karen and I were hoping for.
I’ve been collecting all the reviews on my announcement post, do go and explore them fully; there is much food for thought. Reviews were still coming in late on Sunday, including one from Our Vicar’s Wife of a Stella Gibbons novel, for those who look out for her bookish thoughts.
Do let me know if I’ve missed your review, of course. Between us we covered an astonishing 52 books this week, with quite a few of those getting more than one perspective. It was great to get (alongside literary fiction) children’s books, crime, spy, sci-fi, literary non-fiction, political non-fiction, and more. From big names to people I’d never heard of, this gives such a great overview of the year.
What have we learned about 1938? I think my main takeaway was how the spectre of war didn’t seem all that present in the bulk of what we read – there was plenty of humour, reflection, family drama, murder (!), but less focused on the dramas in Europe than I might have imagined.
Thank you so, so much for participating. There are many books I want to read now – didn’t 1938 turn out to be a stellar year for books? – and I feel as though I understand 1924 and 1938 much better than I did a year ago. And… where’s next?
Karen and I wanted to keep the momentum going by announcing the next Club year today. In October, we warmly invite you to the 1947 Club. We shan’t keep jumping a decade every time, but it was irresistible to see how things have changed soon after the war. And it felt time for an odd number.
Obviously we’ll remind you closer to the time, and there’ll be another badge, but I’m excited already. Roll on 1947!
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier #1938Club Guest Review
When I told family and friends that I was co-leading the 1938 Club, I encouraged anybody who was interested to contribute their own review. A few of my IRL friends have indeed been doing 1938 reading along with us, and my friend Sarah has written this fantastic review of one of my faves, Rebecca. Do make her welcome!
I have strong memories of watching Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Rebecca as a kid – the atmosphere, all in black and white, Maxim driving the heroine around in Monte Carlo, and the fancy dress party at Manderley. A few years ago I read du Maurier’s collection of short stories including The Birds – she has clearly made several strong contributions to the public consciousness.
So I came to Rebecca with some expectation, and also a sense that I knew the story. Neither mattered (and my feeling that I knew what happened was wrong, in any case!) as I was instantly drawn in. I love it when a book is so easy to get into, and you feel like you’ve been reading it for much longer than the first few pages. At various points along the way the book would bring back elements of the story that I remembered, but this didn’t bother me and I happily followed it, expecting some things and being surprised by others.
While the nameless protagonist and narrator is in many ways annoying, I found her very easy to empathise with in the first half – perhaps because I can remember being an awkward, shy girl, but also I think du Maurier does a fantastic job of bringing her character to life and making her inner monologue realistic and relatable. She goes off on involved fantasy daydreams at the drop of a hat, thinks (tamely) bitchy thoughts about her obnoxious employer Mrs Van Hopper, and for me is just the right mix of awkward, hopeful, embarrassed, daydreamy, and sullen, with bouts of confidence that then get shot down. I’ve made her sound awful! She’s not, she’s really quite endearing. And her first love/obsession for Maxim de Winter, the handsome stranger who shows her kindness and attention and entertains her in the absence of any friends at all, is really understandable and well drawn. Of course as readers, you feel that something’s not quite adding up, but it’s how du Maurier wants you to feel. You buy it; you’re along for the ride and eagerly waiting to see what will happen when they get back to Manderley.
The not-quite-right feeling that you get from the start of the relationship between Maxim and the narrator is continued and built upon once we get to Manderley, with the creepy staff, the disused wing of the house, the ‘blood red’ rhododendrons, and the obsessive references to Rebecca – for a good portion of the book it feels like she is mentioned on every page, which is obviously a device to make you feel like our narrator – to feel the oppressive, overwhelming force of Rebecca everywhere and in all the characters you meet. Here, I started to feel slightly frustrated by the spinelessness of our narrator, and the crappy attitude of Maxim (I don’t care if you’re Troubled and Brooding, you can pull yourself out of it enough to know you’re being horrible), but it didn’t really matter as I was invested in the story. I found myself trying to second guess the plot developments and the truth about Rebecca – but in an enjoyable way; trying to pick up on clues and events to work out what they meant. That sustained suspense is what du Maurier has done really effectively in this novel.
There are some lovely observations that stand out as being very much of their time – like when a dead body is discovered and an investigation must take place – and part of the ensuing chaos is that the lady of the house misses lunch, and decides they won’t change for dinner that evening. Similarly, when her husband comes under suspicion of murder, and our narrator frets that his scone is going cold. The party they host, too, sounds fabulous – if you had servants to run it for you in your stately mansion – hundreds of people in fancy dress dancing to the live band in the ballroom, with food and drink laid out, games rooms, fairy lights throughout the extensive grounds, and a fireworks display; all cleared away by the staff first thing in the morning.
In the end, the characters are not completely believable (although maybe they were more so in 1938; but I’m still genuinely puzzled by facts such as that Maxim and the second Mrs de Winter actually seem to love each other), and much of the plot is a little thin (why did Maxim marry Rebecca in the first place? Are we to believe that the sole reason why Rebecca was so despicable, so wicked, was simply that she was sleeping around and threatening to bring shame upon Manderley?! Why doesn’t Frank, Maxim’s confidante who shows the most kindness to our narrator, tell her the truth about Rebecca?).
The writing isn’t brilliant or outstanding, but it’s really good – solid, clean writing with enough description and atmosphere but that doesn’t get bogged down, and feels more modern and fresh than a book that’s nearly 80 years old.
It’s not the scariest or thrilleriest thriller that you’ll read, but despite all of the misgivings above I found it really enjoyable – a well written, compelling, interesting story that has left a fresh impression on me. I think it will continue to stand out as leaving a lasting memory, even if it’s just a sense of the suspense created, the atmosphere of Manderley, or some of the characters, like I had from watching the film around 20 years ago. I’ll definitely look forward to reading my next du Maurier.