As usual, I’ll tell you more about individual posts – but Shiny New Books Issue 8 is now live!
Writing in haste… but do go and have an explore. It’s the usual mix of great fiction, non-fiction, reprints, and BookBuzz features – slimmer than usual as we’ve been particularly keen to include only our favourites. Many thanks to my wonderful co-editors Annabel, Harriet, and Victoria!
I’m rather astonished that I’m managing to join in with the Margery Sharp celebrations at Beyond Eden Rock (organised by Jane) – chiefly because I only managed to start The Eye of Love (1957) on Saturday, and have had a very busy weekend. Indeed, it’s been a busy old year so far, which is the reason I must give for not having published as many blog posts as I’d intended so far. But the combination of fierce determination and (more importantly) Sharp’s excellent writing have made me finish just in time.
The Eye of Love is the third Sharp novel I’ve read so far, and it’s been on my shelves for many years. The reason I chose this one is because it turns out it’s the only one I have in Oxford (I had intended to go with Britannia Mews) – but it is rather lovely, and (sorry, but the connection is irresistible) sharp.
This is Sharp’s quirky take on a romance novel, her motif being that the ‘eye of love’ sees things that other eyes cannot; basically, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, the beholders are a middle-aged couple, one of whom (born Dorothy Hogg, but choosing instead the name Dolores Diver) fancies herself a Spanish Rose type, comb in hair and shawl around her shoulders, but is known by laughers in the street as Old Madrid. Her inamorata is Mr Gibson, a portly man who has made his money in retail. As the novel opens, they are deciding that they can no longer be a couple. They have been in love, and lovers, for a decade – but both decide, unspoken, that people of their disparate stations do not marry. Instead, Mr Gibson must marry a Miss Joyce, solely for business reasons.
They are both rather distraught, but Sharp’s masterstroke is adding a third element: the young girl Martha. She is Dolores’ niece by marriage, orphaned and living with Dolores, and a more convincingly stolid and dispassionate child never existed in fiction. She is not mean or intentionally rude, she is simply completely uninterested in the emotional lives of the adults around her. Where Dolores hopes she will be a shoulder to cry on, or even some sort of go-between, she naively and honestly makes no indication that she misses him at all. Martha adds wonderful comedy to the novel, and Sharp draws her beautifully. Oh, and she’s also something of an artistic genius, unbeknownst to everyone (including herself).
Martha is not the only element of comedy. The narrative is always undermining the characters’ emotional effusions or deceits. When Miss Joyce accepts Mr Gibson’s proposal, with supposed surprise, Sharp adds:
As she moved impulsively to accept his embrace, she impulsively pressed a bell; the maid who brought in the champagne must have been very handy.
That repeated ‘impulsively’ works wonders. It is a very amusing book, and that – as in Cluny Brown, which I failed to finish in time for Margery Sharp Day 2015 – is due chiefly to this way Sharp has as a narrator. The most ordinary events are lent a spin of dry humour, but, vitally, Sharp remains intensely affectionate about her characters – and so does the reader. That is the keynote of the novel, that has various twists and turns and interlacing events: Dolores and Mr Gibson may appear ridiculous to many, but Sharp ably makes it so that the reader, like the characters, sees them instead through the eye of love.
Incidentally… my copy is The Popular Book Club, eventually a subscription book-of-the-month type club, and my copy still had the original brochure tucked in it (at around p.20, suggesting that they didn’t get very far). It features a little bit about the author…
It’s the spinning blurry woman again! I’m over at Vulpes Libris talking about Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I wasn’t super stoked to read, but which I actually ended up loving (spoilers!)
I usually choose to review books there that don’t necessarily feel like perfect fits for StuckinaBook – i.e. you’ll never find me reviewing a witty novel about spinsters opening a cafe over there – but this is a novel that I think everyone will value. And, let’s face it, I’m probably last to the party on this one anyway.
What’s the opposite of a time-traveller? I suppose it’s somebody who is stuck in one time – and that’s precisely the predicament of the Hyde family at the beginning of S.E. Lister’s novel The Immortals (published a few months ago – and indeed read a few months ago; I’ve been intending to review it for so long, but… Christmas got in the way). They have been living and re-living 1945 for many years, moving at the end of every year, and judging passing time by location rather than world events. This has been the decision of Rosa Hyde’s father, who – for some reason she doesn’t really understand – can’t bare the idea of leaving the year, or the ‘main event’ of going up to London for the declaration of peace.
I say ‘at the beginning’ of the novel, but in fact the novel opens with Rosa’s return – from where (or, more importantly, when) is not immediately clear. (And what an opening line it is! I love its intrigue.)
Rosa came home after seven years, in the same year she had left. It was the beginning of the wet spring she knew so well. She found their cottage on the edge of a village, the latest Hyde home in a string of many, tucked out of the way behind a disused cattle barn. There were sandbags stacked against the steps, blackout curtains in every window. Bindweed framed the doorway. Beyond the fields a church spire rose into the dusky sky, lashed by rain, its chimes silenced.
Lister has a knack for portraying a time and place quickly and effectively. This is an example, but there are plenty in the novel – because we then see all the times and places that Rosa has travelled. Once away from the 1945-dwelling of her father, she is able to travel much more widely. We rush through a maelstrom of places and periods, with local colour thrown in at just the right amount – on one page, afraid in a busy Victorian street; shortly after, made a near-deity in a bygone era. That section was rather lovely – seeing Rosa elevated in that way, after her years of 1945 tedium – but things become more complex when she meets Tommy Rust. He is a fellow Immortal (and believes in this immortality with his whole heart), and something of a suave, risky gent of the sort that is rather dashing in literature and might not be so much outside of it.
And then there is the soldier Harding, who makes things even more complicated – though I thing I was more affected by the brothers who travelled together as much as possible, and were distraught at the possibility of being separated. But, y’know, brothers always get me.
I’m not much of a one for time-travel novels in general, but I certainly am for novels about family dynamics – so I liked The Immortals best when Rosa was dealing with abandoning her family, and coping with missing many years of her younger sister’s life, and that sort of thing – all of which was handled nicely. The climax of the day peace was declared in 1945 – a day on which Rosa’s father always goes to London to join in the celebrations, trying to avoid other iterations of himself in the crowd – was very moving, and an excellent peak. Indeed, it seems rather as though the non-sci-fi sections of The Immortals were my favourites… and perhaps that was inevitable. But more skill is required to make quotidian events and relationships captivating than is needed to pick a selection of intriguing years and write about them – so kudos for Lister there, and it will be intriguing to see what she could turn her hand to in a more earth-bound genre, if she ever chooses to give that a whirl.
Thanks, Sophie, for sending me a copy of this book.
I’ve just finished Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – and, indeed, have just had book group discussing it. A full review will come soon, but first, it inspired me to put together something quickly on book covers. Something entirely unoriginal, but… well, I’ve not done it here before, so it’s original for StuckinaBook.
This is the cover of the copy I read, which I borrowed from the library:
And it’s a really weird blurry turning woman. What is it with blurry turning women? It reminded me of the covers to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the eerily similar The Spare Room by Helen Garner:
Who decides that blurry women and spinning women are what people want on covers? We hear a lot about headless women on covers – and some blurry women can be headless too, it seems – but what is with this spinning? It’s so niche. I don’t recall Ifemelu doing any spinning to speak of.
Of course, I now can’t find any other examples. HAVE I launched into an exposé of something that doesn’t actually happen? Well, possibly. I’m relying on you all to find more examples for me…
I’m back in Oxford now, and took the opportunity to go via the Bookbarn in North Somerset – where I have been many times before, and have written about here on several occasions. Every book is £1, though all the best books are siphoned off into the internet-only section of the barn complex (which wasn’t always the case – those halcyon days when all the books were browsable!) Truth be told, their fiction section is quite poor now, and I got very little there, but I got an awful lot of non-fiction. As you will see…
Lydia & Maynard: the letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes
Ballerinas and economists aren’t top of my list of interests, but the Bloomsbury Group certainly are up there – and I love collections of letters, so here’s a corner of that group that I can add to my collection.
The Hare With the Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
So, LibraryThing tells me that I already have this. Oops. Lucky charity shop in Oxford!
Letters to Louise: Theodore Dreiser’s Letters to Louise Campbell
I haven’t read a word by Dresier, but couldn’t resist more letters – particularly since they promise to cover his writing process and drafts, which is fascinating to me. And I bought a novel by him over a decade ago, so maybe it will inspire me to read that.
Hassan by James Elroy Flecker
If you’re following those books in the photo above, this was a tiny Penguin slipped between two bigger hardbacks. I bought this entirely because he gets a bewildered mention by the Provincial Lady.
Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Buchan (O Douglas)
I didn’t realise that Anna B had written an autobiography – this looks fab.
Brensham Village by John Moore
The sequel to a book I have yet to read… but do own. Fingers crossed I like it!
Woman Alive by Susan Ertz
I haven’t read Ertz yet, but she gets a glowing mention in Nicola Beauman’s A Very Great Profession, and this hardback is lovely.
Two Worlds by David Daiches
All I know about Daiches is some literary criticism I read years ago – which seemed a good enough reason to grab his autobiography about growing up Jewish in Edinburgh.
Evelyn Waugh by Frances Donaldson
If there’s something I love even more than biographies, it’s memoirs by people who knew famous people in a non-famous context. Niche, I know, but Waugh’s self-proclaimed ‘country neighbour’ should be fun.
Talking Heads 2 by Alan Bennett
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
National Treasure.
The Spirit of Tolerance by Katharine Moore
I’ve read a couple of things by Moore, and also read about her editing this collection in her letters with Joyce Grenfell.
Mild and Bitter by A.P. Herbert
I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually read anything by APH, but I read quite a lot about him – and anything collected from Punch in the 1930s is going to be fabs,
My Apprenticeships by Colette
This is the year I’ll read some Colette, promise, Peter.
The Best of Stephen Leacock 1
I suspect I’ve got all these selections in other books, but I’m not the sort of guy who leaves Stephen Leacock on the shelf.
Pomp & Circumstance by Noel Coward
This has been on my keep-an-eye-out-for list for so many years that I can no longer quite way – other than the fact that Noel Coward is a legend.
The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium by Gerald Durrell
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives by Gerald Durrell
The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell
The Drunken Forest by Gerald Durrell
There were SO many books by Gerald Durrell and Laurence Durrell there – I was particularly pleased to find the second and third books in the My Family and other Animals trilogy.
Selected Essays by Hilaire Belloc
Since I use the word belloc to mean ‘hilarious’ – yes, I know – so I should read some essays by him, right?
You may be getting tired of me reviewing books about books – well, there are more to come, and I can’t get enough of them! Recommendations always heartily welcomed. I can’t remember where I first heard of Where I’m Reading From (2014) by Tim Parks, but I have an inkling that it might have been in the ‘You May Also Be Interested In’ section on Amazon. I do know how I got it – it was a birthday present from my friends Sarah and Paul, along with Michael Dirda’s Browsings which I’ll also be writing about soon.
Tim Parks (a name I did not know before, once I realised that I’d been getting him mixed up with Tim Pears) is a British novelist, translator, and professor who lives in Milan. As such, he is well placed to write about all manner of literary topics, from the nuances of copyright to the different ways to translate isolated sentences from D.H. Lawrence. His pieces, which previously all appeared in the New York Review of Books, are certainly engaging and thought-provoking. They are also maddeningly repetitive.
The same points come up over and over and over again – that writers outside of English aim for an international style rather than one linked to their own particular contexts; that translators have to choose between content and tone; that academic criticism is too engaged with the text and not with the author’s life. This last suggests Park hasn’t read any English Literature academic writing for about forty years, but the other two would be extremely interesting points if they didn’t each come up a dozen times. And it did begin to feel, at one point, as though D.H. Lawrence were the only novelist Parks had ever read. True, these articles/essays came out at intervals over a four year period, but he could still have gone in for a bit more variety. Michael Dirda did; that’s all I’m sayin’.
BUT I should add that, those recurrences forgiven, Where I’m Reading From is fascinating and offers much food for thought. Even acknowledging how much repetition is in the book (and now, it seems, in my blog post about it), the topics covered are many and various, and often unusually interesting. To pick one, ‘Why Readers Disagree’:
Enthusiasm or disappointment may be confirmed or attenuated, but only exceptionally reversed [by criticism]. We say: James Wood/Colm Toibin/Michiko Kakutani admires the book and has given convincing reasons for doing so, but I still feel it is the worst kind of crowd-pleaser.
Let me offer a possible explanation that has been developing in my mind for a decade and more. It’s a central tenet of systemic psychology that each personality develops in the force field of a community of origin, usually a family, seeking his or her own position in a pre-existing group, or ‘system’, most likely made up of mother, father, brothers and sisters, then aunts, uncles, grandparents, and so on. The leading Italian psychologist, Valeria Ugazio further suggests that this family ‘system’ also has ‘semantic content’; that is, as conversations in the family establish criteria for praise and criticism of family members and non-members, one particular theme or issue will dominate.
These might be bravery vs cowardice, moral vs immoral, success vs failure etc. – and these are, he argues, reflected in the qualities we look for in novels or characters. I.e. we may judge books on entirely different scales from one another. At one point Parks makes what he considers an exhaustive list, which is bizarrely brief, but it’s a very intriguing notion nonetheless.
I could either write thousands of words about the different angles and authors considered or end here – and I think it will have to be the latter. Parks doesn’t write with the eager enthusiasm of the avid reader, but rather the mildly detached intellect of the professional man of books – yet those of us who are avid readers first and foremost will find much to interest. This he certainly did – most so in articles on translation, where he resisted quoting examples that only the polylingual would understand, for which I am grateful. Perhaps one does not warm to Parks as a friendly voice (and his treatment of his parents in these articles does little to enamour me, I will confess) but he is not setting out to be a chatty companion so much as a muser. As that, he is very admirable. But he is not Dirda. More on him anon…
Ethel & Ernest: A True Story (1998) was one of the books I bought in the splendid little bookshop in Ludlow about a month ago, and it felt appropriate to read it over Christmas, given that Briggs is most famous for his festive creation The Snowman. I first heard him talk about it in a documentary that was shown a year or two ago, and determined to keep an eye out for it. For some reason, it seemed like the sort of book that one should discover serendipitously, rather than ordering online, if that makes sense.
It tells, in graphic form (not a graphic novel, of course, but I don’t know if there is a proper compound noun for graphic non-fiction) the whole of his parents’ lives together. They meet (so the pictures allege) when she was a maid waving a duster out of a window, and he a milkman who thought she was waving at him. On such premises are great marriages based. With affection and insight, Briggs charters their life as a young married couple, moving up in the world a bit, having a son – Raymond himself, of course – and coping with war.
As they get older, so does Raymond – and he begins to disappoint them a little, choosing art school over a stable career. Ethel – who has always cared deeply for propriety and improving her station – wants him to cut his hair and behave better. She also ticks off Ernest whenever he says anything she considers indecently amorous – but these qualities are offset by, say, her passionate refusal to send Raymond away as an evacuee, and sacrifice when she sees she must. (I can’t find many examples of the artwork to use, so trust me on that being in there.)
How much Briggs gets right about Ethel and Ernest is up for debate, particularly in relation to their opinion of him. The graphic form allows only snapshots from a long period of time, and no introspection at all, so we can only guess how successful Briggs was in an objective portrait (or even if this was his aim). Doubtless Ethel or Ernest would have created something completely different, yet this is a book which is filled with affection – Briggs has somehow managed to convey how dearly he loved his parents without crafting a graphic hagiography. This love is particularly evident towards the end where, of course, Ethel and Ernest die.
All is tied together with Briggs’ characteristic style as an artist- a mixture of naivety and domesticity that feels mimetic and welcoming, without being cloying. It’s not exactly charming, because it hits too hard, but it is certainly moving: an excellent tribute to two ordinary people who, to Briggs, were inevitably extraordinary.
Well, two days in to 2016 and I’ve finished a novel that I’m pretty sure will be on my Top Books 2016, unless a lot of truly spectacular things come along; it’s already on my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. The Lark (1922) by E. Nesbit is an absolute joy – charming, witty, dry, affectionate, and wry all in one go. May I offer a hearty thanks to Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow who first alerted me (and anybody who reads his excellent blog) to its existence, and a second hearty thanks to whichever person donated it to a charity shop in Yeovil, of all unlikely places. And, while I’m at it, a third hearty thanks to Lily P. Bond, who apparently bought this book at Ilminster Fair in 1925, and a fourth to Edith, who gave it to her mother with love at some unspecified date. (Copies can be found in ebook version for very little money.)
The novel starts off with a trio of children (Jane, Emmeline, and Lucilla) which is one of Nesbit’s few mistakes in this book, I think, because it will either disappoint those who like books about children or deter those who don’t: there is only a scene before they’re adults. The difference between their childlike naivety and their adult independence is, truth be told, only four years – but it might as well be a lifetime, so far as The Lark is concerned. As ‘children’, adventurous Jane decides to cast a spell which will show her the man she will marry (to the consternation of Emmie and Lucy): she wanders off to a wood to do so, and – lo and behold! – who should be passing but John Rochester. She sees him, he slips off, and the story is allowed to rush forwards to present day.
Now, if you’re thinking ‘Jane and Mr Rochester, how subtle, gosh I wonder what will happen to them’ then (a) you’re rushing ahead of yourself, and (b) Nesbit is consistently so knowing and self-knowing as a narrator that one can never get the upper hand. When he turns up again, and is ignored by the adult Jane, Nesbit coyly dismisses him as being ‘definitely out of the picture, which concerns itself only with the desperate efforts of two inexperienced girls to establish, on the spur of the moment, a going concern that shall be at once agreeable and remunerative’. It’s impossible to feel outraged at coincidences or unlikely behaviour if the narrator points them out too.
Jane and Lucie, you see, as destitute because their guardian has made bad investments with their inheritances (they are both orphans). ‘Destitute’ in this case means ownership of a beautiful cottage and £500, which this calculator tells me is the equivalent of over £20,000 today; this sort of destitute makes my full-time employment look rather inadequate. The indomitable pair decide to treat their misfortune (for such we must accept it) as ‘a lark’, and I can’t help agreeing with Scott that this is an excellent excerpt to quote:
“I want to say I think it’s a beastly shame.”
“No, no! “said Jane eagerly. “Don’t start your thinking with that, or you’ll never get anywhere. It isn’t a shame and it isn’t beastly. I’ll tell you what it is, Lucy. And that’s where we must start our thinking from. Everything that’s happening to us—yes, everything—is to be regarded as a lark. See? This is my last word. This. Is. Going. To. Be. A. Lark.”
“Is it?” said Lucilla. “And that’s my last word.”
This sentiment recurs – when one is unhappy, or bad things happen, they force themselves to laugh it off. It’s endearing rather than sickeningly Pollyannaish because they don’t find it easy, and they constantly tease one another about it. Their sarcasm and quips are delightfully witty, even if they retain a slightly cumbersome Edwardian propriety. In this particular instance, they must find a way to generate an income from within the narrow straits of a gentlewoman’s education – and land upon selling flowers. There are enough in their small garden to last them a day, but rather more can be found at an old shut-up house in the neighbourhood.
They manage to charm the old man who owns it to let them sell flowers from the garden room and – would you believe it? – he turns out to be John Rochester’s uncle. But Jane is far from pleased to see him, and insists that they can only be friends. There is much to enjoy about Jane and Lucy setting up a flower shop (including an improbable encounter with their future gardener in Madame Tussaud’s) – I love any story about people setting up a shop, particularly slightly feisty women in the 1920s. As The Lark develops, they will also start taking in paying guests – rather far into the novel, actually; it could have appeared earlier – and find their lives increasingly entangled with Rochester. Other characters I haven’t even had time to mention are the sceptical cook, the flirtatious maid Gladys, and the arrival of Miss Antrobus, who is supposedly Rochester’s intended. And there is a hilarious section involving poor Lucy disguising herself as an invented aunt.
The Lark could really have been about anything; it is Nesbit’s style that carries the day. There are more than hints of it in her children’s novels, but here – the first of her adult novels that I have read – she can give full rein to her dry humour and ability to show light-hearted exchanges between amusing, intelligent characters whom you can’t help loving. The whole thing is an absolute pleasure, and would be perfect between Persephone covers. It’s pretty rare that I’m sad to see a book end, but I will confess to feeling a little distraught that my time spent in Jane and Lucy’s company is over – until I re-read it, of course.
One day in to 2016 and I’ve finished a book (albeit a slim one: the play version of And Then There Were None, having watched the very good but quite scary BBC adaptation over Christmas) and am currently reading one I’m sure will be on my best-of-2016 list. It’s The Lark by E. Nesbit and I’ll write about it properly when I’m finished, along with millions of other books that have been sat waiting to be reviewed.
2015 has been a pretty big year for Stuck-in-a-Book – a change of URL and look and ‘Tea or Books?’ as a new podcast are the biggest things for me, as well as the ongoing Shiny New Books and Vulpes Libris.
Number of books read
106, which is better than the 98 I read in 2014 (if ‘better’ is the right word; I know it’s not a competition but I do like to hit that 100 mark if possible.)
Male/female authors
50 by men, 55 by women, and 1 by both. A surprisingly high number for men – possibly the highest ever, excepting (I daresay) around 2002 when I read everything by A.A. Milne I could get my hands on. I have no explanation for why men cropped up so much this year.
Fiction/non-fiction
66 fiction, 40 non-fiction (and I decided that Cornelia Otis Skinner’s essays and Shirley Jackson’s family memoirs had enough exaggeration to count as fiction – so the number could be changed a little bit.) I actually thought non-fiction might be even higher this year – but the ratio of books tbr is definitely heavily on the side of fiction, so who knows what will happen at this rate…
Books in translation
6, which I thought was terrible, until I realised that the past two years I’ve read 5 and 3 respectively. There was me thinking it was often in double figures. They came mostly from French, with a Flemish book and a Japanese book also thrown in. Nothing Scandinavian at all – no Tove Jansson! – although I am halfway through a Norwegian novel that isn’t very good.
Graphic books
4, believe it or not! Two fiction and two non-fiction. Quick question: am I the zeitgeist?
Most-read author
It looks like nobody stole my attention completely this year: I read 4 Agatha Christies, and then a few authors (Elizabeth von Arnim, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Oliver Sacks, and Phyllis Rose) tie for second place on 3.
Oldest book
A re-read of Agnes Grey for my book group.
Re-reads
Speaking of… only 5 re-reads this year (while it was 10 in 2014 and 2013). Which is good for the state of my tbr! They were all favourite books too: Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson, Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, and Guard Your Daughters by Diane Tutton.
New-to-me authors
47 of the books I read this year were by authors I was reading for the first time – which encourages me that I’m not stuck in a reading rut!
Most disappointing book
I talked the other day about my disappointment re: A Wrinkle in Time, and fully believe those of you who told me I read it twenty years too late.
Best title
I think Milan Kundera’s The Festival of Insignificance probably.
Worst title
I thought The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym was a really good book and, yes, the title is explained in the novel – but what a silly title to give it! And not a little pretentious.
Animals in book titles
Which leads neatly into this category! Every year I do this one, and realise how many animals have sneaked onto my bookshelves without me noticing! Not quite so many this year… The Guest Cat, The Hog‘s Back Mystery, The Pilgrim Hawk, The Sweet Dove Died, and (?) Letters to the Sphinx, with honourable mention to My Family and Other Animals.
Strange things that happened in books I read in 2015
My favourite category! This year, ducks swam through drawing-room windows, a bird of prey came between a married couple, various planets were visited, time travellers repeated 1945 over and over again, Lilliputian people waged war and peace, a doppelgänger turned up out of the blue and fell in love, trains took people to a dystopic future, all the undergraduates in Oxford killed themselves, a tiger exacted revenge, God appeared in the clouds to give some sage advice, and two pairs of people loved each other so much that they reincarnated. Oh, and a man mistook his wife for a hat.