All

Pieces of Eighties

StuckinaBook All 24 Comments

When I compiled my suggestions for A Century of Books (here), Thomas rightly pointed out that I’d pretty much cheated for the 1980s.  Six of my ten suggestions for that decade really relate to different periods – because they’re biographies or lit crit or whatever.  Although I think titles like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Bean Trees earn their right to be there, it’s fair to say that my knowledge of 1980s literature is pretty lacking.  I didn’t read my first proper book until 1991, after all.

For some reason, when I think of the 1980s all I think of is Bonnie Tyler, looking a bit like this:

So, although I won’t be compiling a list for my challenge, I would still like some suggestions to get me in the right mindset for the 1980s next year.  Which books would you recommend from the 1980s, fiction or non-fiction?  You can suggest any, but I’d especially appreciate it if they were in some way ‘zeitgeisty’…

I know you’ll do me proud!  Over to you…

Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim

StuckinaBook All , , 15 Comments

37. Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim

I am very grateful to Erica Brown for giving a paper on Elizabeth von Arnim’s excellent novel Christopher and Columbus (1919) at the conference I attended recently, as it was the incentive I needed to read it.  Not that I needed a lot of incentive – I loved both The Enchanted April and The Caravaners, as clicking on those titles will attest.  The former was very sweet, almost sentimental, in its depiction of the changing powers of a beautiful place; the latter was a bitingly ironic first-person account of an unpleasant, war-mongering German on a caravanning trip in England.  It would be difficult to think of two more different novels coming from the same author, and I wondered where my third von Arnim experience could possibly take me.  As it turned out, right in between the two – Christopher and Columbus is often very cynical, in an incredibly funny way, and yet also very endearing.  And it has twins in it.  So obviously it goes straight onto my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About.  (We’re getting quite close to the end now, aren’t we?)  Prepare yourself for a fairly long review, since I got carried away… 

Christopher and Columbus are, in fact, nineteen year-old twins Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas von Twinkler.  I’ll have to forgive their mother for giving her twins essentially the same name, because she is dead – as the novel begins, these half-German, half-English girls are living with their abhorrant Uncle Arthur and long-suffering Aunt Alice, and war breaks out.  Uncle Arthur can’t stand opening his house up to enemy aliens (even if they are his wife’s relations) and so packs them off on a boat to America, neutral in 1916 when this is set.  They don’t really see themselves as German, as they explain to Mr. Twist, an adorable young man they meet on the boat – and the rich inventor of Twist’s Non-Trickling Teapot.

Anna-Rose watched his face. “It [our surname] isn’t only Twinkler,” she said, speaking very distinctly.  “It’s von Twinkler.”

That’s German,” said Mr. Twist; but his face remained serene.

“Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn’t happen that we weren’t.”

“I don’t think I quite follow,” said Mr. Twist.

“It is very difficult,” agreed Anna-Rose. “You see, we used to have a German father.”

“But only because our mother married him,” explained Anna-Felicitas. “Else we wouldn’t have.”

“And though she only did it once,” said Anna-Rose, “ages ago, it has dogged our footsteps ever since.”

The most delicious thing about this novel (and it is a very delicious novel) is undoubtedly the twins’ dialogue.  It’s such a delight to read.  I don’t quite know how to describe it – maybe as though it had been translated into German and back again?  But not just that, they both have such a captivatingly unusual outlook on life.  Their logic swirls in circles which dizzy the listener; their conversations would feel at home at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – and yet they are lovely, kind, fundamentally good people – and without being remotely irritating.

Those of you who’ve been reading Stuck-in-a-Book for a while will know I like twin novels – but I also like to judge ’em.  The cardinal sins of putting twins in a book are (a) making them exactly like each other, (b) making them exact opposites of each other, and (c) having them ever be surprised at the fact that they are twins.  You’d be surprised yourself at how often the third of these happens – as though being a twin weren’t something completely ingrained in the characters, and they happened to forget that they looked like their sibling etc.  Personally, I find the idea of not being a twin incredibly weird.  Your sibling doesn’t share your birthday?  Didn’t start school when you did, or have the same bedtime and pocket money?  Very strange. (!)

Sorry, sidetracked.  As I was saying, Elizabeth von Arnim was being put the test – and passed with flying colours.  Well, nearly.  I got irritated by them dressing the same as each other at the age of nineteen (THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN), but we’ll let that slide.  They are very believable as twins – wrapped up in each other’s worlds, but with their own personalities.  While Mr. Twist may think of them ‘as one person called, generally, Twinklers’, this is not how they see themselves.  Anna-Rose is a little more sensible and also more sensitive; Anna-Felicitas is dreamy and other-worldly and yet often the most tenacious when it comes to arguing a point.  They make such a wonderful duo, and carry the heart of Christopher and Columbus – even if the rest of the novel had been drab and dull (which it is not) they alone would make it a worthwhile vibrant read.

For the majority of the novel they are being hurried from pillar to post.  The ocean voyage takes up a lot of the narrative, as they meet their fellow-passengers pleasant and unpleasant, and most significantly Mr. Twist, who (by the end of the journey) considers them akin to sisters.  Whether or not the good people of 1916 America will share this outlook is more open to debate – he has a particularly tricky time in Clark, at the home of his self-delusional, tyrannical mother and put-upon sister.  Elizabeth von Arnim’s portrait of small-town life hasn’t dated much in a hundred years (although I still love small towns and villages):

It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst.  Clark was very small, and therefore also very virtuous.  Each inhabitant was the careful guardian of his neighbour’s conduct.  Nobody there ever did anything that was wrong; there wasn’t a chance.  But as Nature insists on a balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil.  They were minds active in suspicion.  They leapt with an instantaneous agility at the worst conclusions.  Nothing was ever said in Clark, but everything was thought.

But before they arrive in Clark they travel all over America, bad luck meeting them at every turn.  While von Arnim relies heavily on coincidence for the events of this section of the novel (including a very amusing section where a taxi-driver thinks the Annas are dressed for a funeral, when they have no knowledge that their host is dead) it’s all done so endearingly that it doesn’t matter.

Part of the amusement comes from the girls’ unfamiliarity with the brave new not-really-so-neutral world they have entered.  They are not accustomed to the American practice of tipping, nor the absence of afternoon tea, as is evinced after they have been instructed in the art of the former by an insolent hotel employee:

“He might have said thank you,” she said indignantly to Anna-Felicitas, giving a final desperate brushing to the sulphur.

“I expect he’ll come to a bad end,” said Anna-Felicitas soothingly.

They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing such a thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables laid for dinner. It wasn’t the custom much in America, explained Mr. Twist, to have tea, and no preparations were made for it in hotels of that sort. The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be discouraged, were showing their detachment from it by sitting in a corner oof the room playing dominoes.

It is, in fact, the lack of afternoon tea which spurs them on to their next project.  And, frankly, I can think of no better reason for doing anything.  They decide to set up a tea room called The Open Arms, specialising in expensive afternoon teas.  I shan’t tell you any more of the plot, because there is plenty in the 500 pages to discover for yourself (including an ending which I felt did let down the tone a little), but I did want to mention The Open Arms as a means of introducing you to Mrs. Bilton.  She is the cook hired, ostensibly to cook, but mostly to lend an air of respectability to the endeavour.  Mrs. Bilton is a hilarious creation.  She does nothing but talk.  No interruptions – save screaming in her face – have the least effect on her.  Mrs. Bilton is every talkative older lady you have ever known, multiplied by a thousand.  Mostly she talks about herself, her thoughts, and the varying state of her psyche.

The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because they didn’t know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking for she didn’t answer; but they listened with real interest to her concrete experiences, and especially to the experiences connected with Mr. Bilton.  They particularly wished to ask questions about Mr. Bilton, and find out what he had thought of things.  Mrs. Bilton was lavish in her details of what she had thought herself, but Mr. Bilton’s thoughts remained impenetrable.  It seemed to the twins that he must have thought a lot, and have come to the conclusion that there was much to be said for death.

Oh, how I love E von A’s turn of phrase, which slips so quickly from the merely ironic to the ever so slightly biting.  It is this stream of cynicism which prevents the general ebullience of the twins from ever becoming wearing, and which makes the novel so wonderful.  She really is a brilliant writer, and has been underappreciated – she seems to be remembered (if she as remembered at all) chiefly as a whimsical, fey writer.  But like Austen, her tongue can be as sharp as it is charming.

I’m taking a bit of a risk, putting Christopher and Columbus on my 50 Books list when there are so many other E von A titles I’ve yet to encounter.  Perhaps I will end up preferring one of her others, but I will still believe that this particular novel has been unjustly neglected and want to do my best to create fanfare for it.  I promise you’ll be enchanted by Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas, and probably repeat fragments of their dialogue aloud to anyone who will listen.

And now I turn over to you – which E von A ought I to read next?

Things to get Stuck into:

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough (1942) – I haven’t blogged about this, because I borrowed it and had to return it, but it’s absolutely wonderful as an accompaniment – serendipitously, I read it immediately after the E von A novel.  It’s non-fiction, about a 1920s trip around Europe by two excited, somewhat green American girls.  The transcontinental trip is thus the other way round, but their experiences are equally amusing and eye-opening.  This book is an absolute scream, and would also be loved by fans of the Provincial Lady.

Cakes galore!

StuckinaBook All 19 Comments

Thanks for your advice about focaccia – I did all those things, and it was far *too* wet.  Like, actually liquid.  So that’s the last time I trust Paul Hollywood.

Luckily I have no such trouble with sweet things (is this the kitchen’s way of telling me to steer away from savoury?) So today I thought I’d share some of my baking creations with you – through photos and recipes, if not actually in edible form. Here they all are:

Obviously I didn’t make the crisps, but the rest are products of my hours in the kitchen. Some of you were asking for recipes, so I thought I’d make this into one of my absolutely-simple-easy-baking posts, which can be ignored by those of you who are either (a) much better bakers than me, or (b) wholly uninterested in baking. But everyone likes looking at pictures of cake, right? I’m only actually going to type out one full recipe today, but will link to another two, and explain a fourth.

First things first, and the thing which went down best with the dozen or so people who came to eat cake, we have mini chocolate orange tortes. I basically put together elements of three different recipes from Afternoon Teas by Valerie Ferguson, and added the twist of orange zest. I’ve made chocolate torte before, but I thought it might be fun, and easier to serve, to make lots of mini tortes. I think it worked better – more pastry in the pastry-to-ganache ratio, which makes them feel a little less rich. I’ll list the ingredients in various measuring forms at the beginning, and then just in grams as I go on. It’s annoying to have to scroll up and down a webpage, if you’re making them from a computer screen…


Mini Chocolate Orange Tortes
Makes about 18

For the Pastry
225g/8oz/2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
115g/4oz/half a cup butter/margarine
Two tablespoons icing (confectioners’) sugar
1 egg
teaspoon vanilla essence

For the Filling
335ml/11 fl oz/one and a third cups double (heavy cream)
350g/12oz dark chocolate
Zest of an orange

You’ll also need a fairly shallow cupcake baking tray – if that’s the correct name for one with 12 inlays for cupcake cases! (Or, in this case, tortes.) Until I learn a better word for those things, I’m calling them ‘inlays’ – which sounds ridiculous, but I have to call them something. This is the one I used, which I think came from Robert Dyas:

1.) Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 (imagine degree signs there, would you?)

2.) Sift 225g plain flour into a bowl, add 115g diced butter/margarine, and work with fingers until it’s breadcrumby.
I always use a wooden spoon to start with, because I hate putting my hands in mixture at the best of times – once the margarine is worked in a bit, it’s less unpleasant.

3.) Stir in two tablespoons icing sugar, then add an egg (which you should have beaten in a mug or similar first). Also add a tablespoon of water, or slightly less. Better less than more at this point. Work into a dough.

4.) Roll out into a dough.
Those five little words sound so easy… I hate using dough, which seems to delight in getting stuck everywhere. So I put flour all over the counter and the rolling pin and my hands and EVERYTHING. It should be rolled pretty thin, but not so you can see the counter through it.

5.) Cut into circles with a cookie-cutter. I didn’t have a cutter big enough, so used a tupperware container. Crucially, the circles have to be big enough to go up the sides of your baking tray inlays, otherwise the filling won’t work… Once you’ve cut your circles, put them in the pre-greased tray.

6.) Prick the bases with a fork, line each one with baking parchment (squares will do) and ceramic baking beans.
If you don’t own ceramic baking beans (and you should!) then any dried beans will do, or rice, or anything heat-proof to weigh the pastry down so it doesn’t rise while baking.

7.) Bake for 10 minutes – then remove paper and beans, and return to oven for another 5 or so minutes, until they’re golden. Remove from the tin and put on a cooling rack.

Depending on how deep the tray inlays are, you may have to bake some more cases now (I did) – reusing the baking parchment, of course.

You might need a bit of a break before you do the next step, as the filling doesn’t take long and the pastry cases need to be cool before you add it.
So… go and have a cup of tea and read a book.

Ready? Ok, let’s make the filling.

8.) Bring 335ml double cream to the boil in a pan over medium heat. Remove from the heat and stir in 350g chopped dark chocolate and the zest of an orange. Keep stirring until it has all melted.
For those in the UK, I actually find that Sainsbury’s Value dark chocolate works and tastes the best here. Not sure about the ethics of the chocolate production, but it’s definitely cheaper and better than their other ranges.

9.) Spoon the mixture into the cases, and leave to set – putting them in the fridge when they’re room temperature.

10.) The filling is *very* rich and quite smooth, and I find a topping of a cracklier chocolate is nice – I used Cocoa Nibs from Divine Deli’s Decorate! which I’ve now sadly finished. Must find some more… don’t seem to be available from their website, but you can browse their range, and now I want it ALL.

Ok, you’re done. Enjoy! (I find they’re at their best if they’ve been in the fridge overnight, so these can be made in advance of a party, maybe…)

This is looking like a long post, but the next two won’t take very long, promise…

These profiteroles came from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, borrowed from Verity. It’s more or less the same as this recipe here, only in the Baking Bible she doesn’t leave them in the oven quite as long – the last ten minutes are optional, post-splitting of profiteroles. I didn’t bother with a piping bag to put them on the tray, which is why they’re a bit misshapen. My twist on the recipe was to add some Bailey’s to the cream, pre-whipping, which was (though I say it myself) rather a stroke of genius. Mmmmmm. Plus, it would keep my brother away from them…

For the brownies, I followed this recipe, with no twist at all! (Measurements only in cups, so I had to do lots of online conversions.) Oddly I found it while searching for date brownie recipes, but it wasn’t until I started baking that I realised they don’t actually have dates in them. So now I have a packet of dates to use later!

Finally, the miniature Victoria sandwiches – this was an idea lovely Jo used on Great British Bake Off, and I thought it sounded fun. I’m not going to give the full recipe, because it’s just a normal sponge cake – the difference is the presentation. Bake it in a deep, rectangular baking tin, rather than circular one. Once it cooled, I got my Holly-from-Bake-Off on, and whipped out a ruler. These are 5-by-3.5cm rectangles, but basically do sizes which look sensible. Pick cuboids of cake which look about the same size as each other – spread jam on one, butter icing on the other, and sandwich together! (For butter icing, use twice as much icing sugar as butter/marg.) A fun way to make (almost)bitesize pieces of cake which doesn’t involve a lot of knife-wielding during a party. (They will, of course, go stale more quickly – but I don’t know of any houses where that’s really an issue…)

Phew! We’re done. Hope you don’t mind such a long baking post, I’ll be back to books next time. Do let me know if you plan on trying out any of these recipes!

Song for a Sunday

StuckinaBook All 5 Comments

I spent most of my waking hours yesterday baking (pictures and recipes to follow – but not for Paul Hollywood’s foccacio which did not work, chuh) and quite a few of them listening to this song.  Florence and the Machine aren’t (isn’t?) as obscure as most of the artists I feature here, at least in this country, but this new song ‘Shake It Out’ is too good not to share.  Enjoy!  (And don’t try to delve too deeply into the horse metaphor… I had no idea what she was singing about.)

(4) All of the above…

StuckinaBook All 31 Comments

I’ve been meaning to ask this question of y’all for ages, and today seems as good a day as any.  Quite a while ago, Harriet and I were discussing (in person, no less) how we ranked the three main components of what makes a novel good.  Of course, ‘what makes a novel good’ is subjective, and the answers are as many and varied as there are readers, but perhaps the criteria we consider when making this evaluation can be listed more succintly.  (Succint, me?  Yes, I know…)

Anyway, broadly speaking there are three things readers ponder on when evaluating how good a novel is.   They are plot, character, and writing style.

With me so far?  Are we all agreed?  Doubtless we aren’t, but let’s assume (for, ironically, the sake of argument) that we are.

Well, then – what order would you put these in, in terms of priority?  Ideally, a novel would have an engaging plot, well-drawn characters and accomplished writing style – but not every novel can be Pride and Prejudice, can it?  If you have to rank them… how would you rank them?

Long-term SiaB readers might not be surprised at the order I choose:
1.) writing style
2.) character
…
…
…
3.) plot

Yes, plot comes a long way third for me.  If I find a book to be badly written, nothing can save it in my eyes.  I could just about forgive a book for having lacklustre characters if it is beautifully written (this is my experience with, say, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves) but I can happily, contentedly adore a novel where nothing happens – so long as the writing is good and the characters well-drawn.

All this, of course, requires sweeping generalisations… over to you, grab a broom, start sweepin’!

The Tiny Wife – Andrew Kaufman

StuckinaBook All , 6 Comments

Rebecca at The Friday Project, an imprint of Harper Collins, very kindly sent me a copy of a teeny tiny book called The Tiny Wife, by Andrew Kaufman – who is apparently famous for All My Friends are Superheroes, of which I have to confess ignorance.  It immediately ticked a lot of boxes for me.  (1) it’s short, (2) it’s fantastic-but-not-fantasy, and (3) it has attractive silhouettey pictures which remind me of that wonderful scene in the penultimate Harry Potter film where the story of the Deathly Hallows is told.

The novella kicks off with a bank robbery – of sorts.  As the opening lines say:

The robbery was not without consequences.  The consequences were the point of the robbery.  It was never about money.  The thief didn’t even ask for any.  That it happened in a bank was incidental.  It could have just as easily happened in a train station or a high school or the Musée d’Orsay.
The thief takes, instead, takes the item of the greatest sentimental value to each person – be it a photograph, a watch, a Camus book or even a calculator.  The thief explains that these objects contain some of their possessors’ souls.

“Listen, I’m in a bit of a rush, so let me conclude.  When I leave here, I will be taking 51 percent of your souls with me.  This will have strange and bizarre consequences in your lives.  But more importantly, and I mean this quite literally, learn how to grow them back, or you will die.”
And he’s quite right.  The strange consequences occupy most of the rest of this slim volume.  One woman’s lion tattoo leaps from her ankle and chases her everywhere, a man’s office fills with water, another man’s mother keeps subdiving into smaller versions of herself… and Stacey, the tiny wife of the title, is gradually shrinking.  She and her husband, who occasionally takes the first-person narrative, must discover how to halt the process.

I loved the idea, as I said.  It’s just the kind of off-the-wall thing I like when I’m not curled up with a cosier 1930s novel.  And I did enjoy it – Kaufman obviously has an incredible imagination, and even a touch of sentimentality which is all too often missing from surreal works (the final line of The Tiny Wife is brilliant).  His style is great – deadpan in the way I love.  The more fantastic a story is, the more matter-of-fact the writing should be.  Yet sometimes the story itself all seemed a bit too off-the-wall – as though he were putting down the next zany idea to pop into his head.  The overall concept was great, but the details didn’t seem to wholly cohere – why were certain things happening in relation to certain objects being given?  What role did the thief play?  I don’t need everything to be explained in a book, far from it, but I like to know that the author has everything under control – that his imagination won’t escape his grasp.  Take the ur-text of all fantastic books, for example: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.   It’s totally mad, nothing makes sense or seems to relate to anything else – but somehow Lewis Carroll weaves a distorted internal logic throughout, and is obviously in control.

But it’s a faint criticism of a short, enjoyable (mad) read – I would love to read more of Kaufman’s work, and I can only see him getting better.

Others who got Stuck into it:
“Fun, cute, quirky and well worth a read.” – Boof, The Book Whisperer

“[…]what might have come across as overly whimsical instead becomes real, and carries the dramatic weight of a problem to be solved[…]” – David, Follow the Thread

A Century of Books: some suggestions

StuckinaBook All 18 Comments

I’m already getting excited about A Century of Books, the anti-challenge reading challenge with very few rules and low expectations(!)  If you missed my original post on it, click here.  I’m especially excited about how excited lots of you are – whether you’re joining in wholly or casually or just watching from the sidelines.  It’s going to be fun!

I was asked by Jo if I could give some suggestions for books, as I imagine most of us have sections of the twentieth century where we’re at a bit of a loss for inspiration.  (For me, it’s the 1900s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s…)  Jo’s was the kind of question I could not possibly resist – the lure of a list, and of going back through my book-lists from the past ten years, was too wonderful a prospect to delay.

And I have made my list!  I was somewhat astonished that not only had I read a book for every year of the twentieth century already (almost), but I could recommend books I thought were good!  1994 took a while, because I absolutely refused to include the abominable Captain Correli’s Mandolin, but thankfully I discovered Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Diaries were published that year – hurrah!  That book is one of a few below that I haven’t actually *finished*, but have dipped into and can safely recommend.

I haven’t duplicated any authors, and there is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.  Unless otherwise stated, the books are novels (and there are evidently some decades where my familiarity with novels is second to children’s books or plays!)  Quite a few of these have been reviewed on SiaB – just search in the search box, or scroll through all reviews.  And if they’re not there and you’re interested, just ask!

Without further ado… my suggestions for 1900-1999.

1900 – The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (non-fiction)
1901 – Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (play)
1902 – Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (children’s short stories)
1903 – The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter (children’s)
1904 – Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (play)
1905 – The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (short stories)
1906 – The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (children’s)
1907 – The Unlucky Family by Mrs. Henry de la Pasture (children’s)
1908 – Love’s Shadow by Ada Leverson
1909 – The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim
1910 – Literary Lapses by Stephen Leacock (short stories)
1911 – The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (children’s)
1912 – The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
1913 – Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil G. Brinton (first Austen sequel)
1914 – The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
1915 – Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse
1916 – London Revisited by E.V. Lucas (essays)
1917 – Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
1918 – The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
1919 – The Young Visiters [sic!] by Daisy Ashford
1920 – Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
1921 – Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
1922 – Lady Into Fox by David Garnett
1923 – Bliss by Katherine Mansfield (short stories)
1924 – The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
1925 – William by E.H. Young
1926 – As It Was by Helen Thomas (biog./autobiog.)
1927 – The Love Child by Edith Olivier
1928 – Orlando by Virginia Woolf
1929 – David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky
1930 – Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
1931 – The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1932 – Cheerful Weather For The Wedding by Julia Strachey
1933 – Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
1934 – Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (children’s)
1935 – Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
1936 – The New House by Lettice Cooper
1937 – They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
1938 – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
1939 – It’s Too Late Now by A.A. Milne (autobiog.)
1940 – Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
1941 – Parents and Children by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1942 – The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
1943 – The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton (children’s)
1944 – A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair
1945 – Animal Farm by George Orwell
1946 – Westwood by Stella Gibbons
1947 – The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
1948 – The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
1949 – I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
1950 – Frost at Morning by Richmal Crompton
1951 – The Lagoon by Janet Frame (short stories)
1952 – Make Me An Offer by Wolf Mankowitz
1953 – The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
1954 – Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico
1955 – Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
1956 – The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (children’s)
1957 – The Entertainer by John Osborne (play)
1958 – Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (children’s)
1959 – The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (play)
1960 – The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
1961 – Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood
1962 – We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
1963 – Let’s Kill Uncle by Rohan O’Grady
1964 – The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
1965 – Oxford by Jan Morris (non-fiction)
1966 – Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
1967 – The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes (essay)
1968 – The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard (play)
1969 – Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
1970 – 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (letters)
1971 – Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
1972 – The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
1973 – In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill
1974 – Enid Blyton: the biography by Barbara Stoney (biog.)
1975 – Danny: The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (children’s)
1976 – Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure by Joyce Grenfell (sketches)
1977 – Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh (play)
1978 – The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
1979 – The Path Through The Trees by Christopher Milne (autobiog.)
1980 – A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1981 – Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark
1982 – Wish Her Safe At Home by Stephen Benatar
1983 – A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman (non-fiction)
1984 – Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
1985 – Henrietta’s War by Joyce Dennys
1986 – Richmal Crompton: the Woman behind William by Mary Cadogan (biog.)
1987 – Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life by Claire Tomalin (biog.)
1988 – The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
1989 – People Who Say Goodbye by P.Y. Betts (autobiog.)
1990 – Immortality by Milan Kundera
1991 – Forever England by Alison Light (lit. crit.)
1992 – The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
1993 – The Matisse Stories by A.S. Byatt (short stories)
1994 – Diaries by Sylvia Townsend Warner (diaries!)
1995 – The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson
1996 – Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding
1997 – Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
1998 – Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (essays)
1999 – All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills

Stellar Stella?

StuckinaBook All 4 Comments

Just a quick update on my previous post, since a few of you were asking in the comments which Stella Gibbons should you read first…  I wrote in my review that I couldn’t choose a better novel between Cold Comfort Farm and Westwood because they were so different, but I do think you should Cold Comfort Farm first.  If you only read one Stella Gibbons’ novel, it should be that one – because while Westwood is brilliant, there are lots of similar(ish) novels out there, whereas Cold Comfort Farm really is one of a kind.  Plus hilarious novels are pretty rare.  There you go, that’s my dictat on starting reading Stella Gibbons….

Westwood – Stella Gibbons

StuckinaBook All , 16 Comments

Why, dear reader, why does it sometimes take me so long to review books?  I read Westwood (1946) by Stella Gibbons whilst on holiday with Colin, thought it was very good, have promised you reviews a dozen times… and only now do I get around to writing about it.

Firstly, many thanks to lovely Vintage books for sending me this copy, and super praise to Pep Montserrat who did the beautiful cover illustration.  Like everyone who has read it, I love Cold Comfort Farm and was excited when I heard that Vintage were hot on Virago’s heels, in publishing more of Gibbons’ work.  Then I read Lynne Truss’ excellent introduction, published in the Guardian (but now not available online) and simply had to read the novel.

In her introduction, Truss writes that ‘If Cold Comfort Farm is Stella Gibbons’s Pride and Prejudice, then Westwood is her Persuasion.’  Those of you who know my thoughts about the relative merits of Austen’s novels may be surprised to learn that this actually encouraged me to read Westwood(!)  Obviously Truss’ analogy can only be taken so far, but she has a point – Westwood is not a comic novel (although it has funny moments), rather it is slightly melancholic and very contemplative.

The heroine of the piece is Margaret Steggles, a plain and uncertain type with a thirst for learning and an appetite for adventure which she keeps sensibly subdued.  She is only 23, unhappy with her job as a teacher and with her home life – her father is prone to affairs, and her mother is disappointed that Margaret is not more like her feisty good-time-gal friend Hilda.  But naturally things do not remain thus.  Margaret finds a ration book on Hampstead Heath and, when returning it, becomes embroiled in the lives of self-important playwright Gerald Challis, his spoilt, snobbish daughter Hebe, and her husband, the painter Alexander Niland.  They are an eminently fashionable set, full of ideas of Art and Beauty, and Margaret wants in.  The nearest she can get, to start off with, is the somewhat hysterical Jewish refugee Zita, who lives with the family and is not quite a housekeeper but definitely not one of the family.

“I like you, Miss Steggles.”

“Thank you.  I like you too,” sais Margaret, who in her present mood would have liked anyone.

“Good.  Den we are friends,” announced Zita, putting out her hand while her eyes overflowed.  Margaret took it and they exchanged a solemn clasp.  “Oh, Miss Steggles – what iss your name?” she demanded, interrupting herself.

“Margaret.”

“Zo.  I shall call you Margaret.  You will call me Zita?”

“I’d love to, Zita.”

“Margaret, I haf a many sadness.  I tell you about it.”

Margaret was so inexperienced as a confidante that no feeling of dismay overcame her on hearing this threat; indeed she hardly heard what Zita said, so overjoyed was she at the prospect of frequent visits to Westwood as Zita’s friend.
As you can see from the ‘iss’ and ‘Zo’ used so liberally, Zita does border a little on stereotype – but she is the liveliest inclusion to the novel, and that which most demonstrates Gibbons’ comic touch.  I am guilty of that which Truss does in the introduction, presumably as inadvertently as I am, of quoting the sections which amused me most.  For, as I said, this isn’t, broadly, a comic novel.  At its heart is Margaret’s awkward attempts to become part of a society which only tolerates her.  There is a desperately sad moment where Margaret overhears Hebe’s opinion of her – it’s in the same area as ‘consciously naive’ and ‘you will be limited as to number – only three at once.’  (Ten points if you recognise those references!)

She especially wants to be involved in Challis’ life, and falls rather in love with him – although from the reader’s perspective it is a trifle difficult to see why.  He is pompous, with high-blown ideas about Beauty which would make Keats seem like a materialist.

“A landscape without hills,” he suddenly pronounced, “is like a woman without mystery.”

There simply was not any answer to this, especially as his unhappy audience realized that whatever she said would be wrong, so she replied feebly:

“Oh – do you think so?”

“The monotony of an endless plain,” continued Mr. Challis disparagingly surveying the mild meadows on every side, “drives men mad.”
But Challis’ Achilles’ heel (and one of the other funny threads through the novel – although funniness laced with tragedy) is his belief in the Beauty of the common innocent girl, provided she be physically attractive, of course.  And the one he sets his eye on is Hilda – remember her?  Margaret’s feisty friend who would, in contemporary soap parlance, undoubtedly be described as a tart with a heart.  Challis bumps into her walking home from the train (“I have been sent by Providence especially to escort you”) and he decides to call himself Marcus Antonius, and she Daphne.  Hilda’s good-natured willingness to put up with him until she is bored, and his slavish (would-be adulterous) devotion to a girl whose nature he has so completely misunderstood, is both farcical and saddening.

Indeed (sweeping generalisation alert) that is how Gibbons treats a lot of the material in Westwood.  It is the kind of plot and the (large) cast of characters which could easily be tragic or comic, and Gibbons treads a path between the two – lingering, perhaps, on the tragic, but never fully abandoning the comic.  Being asked to empathise with Margaret, rather than laugh at or with her, takes Westwood away from the hilarious tour de force of Cold Comfort Farm, but also creates a more thoughtful, thought-provoking work.  Both novels introduce a whirlwind of characters, but while Cold Comfort Farm can rely upon the witty epithet to describe someone, Westwood delves deeper – which does, at times, make the novel feel a bit overcrowded and perhaps overlong – but is also ultimately perhaps more satisfying.  If I were one of these novels to reread next, I must admit it would be Cold Comfort Farm – for an uproarious escapade – but I doubt I would gain as much, and I certainly wouldn’t think as much.  The novels are so different that it is nigh on impossible to say one is better than the other, but what is obvious is that Westwood should never have gone out of print, and Vintage are to be commended for rectifying whosever oversight that was.

Others who got Stuck into this…
I’m going to copy Jackie’s lovely idea of quoting other bloggers who have reviewed the book, and point you in the direction of their reviews.  I think it’s a great addition to Jackie’s blogposts – I’m all about the blogging community.  I’ll just pick two or three each time, so as to feel more like I’m including people in a selective list rather than accidentally excluding people from an exhaustive list!

“[…Margaret] is a masterpiece and definitely earns Gibbons the right to be compared with Austen.[…]” – Hayley, Desperate Reader

“[…] do read this if you love a warm, witty, beautifully written and leisurely novel […]” – Hilary, Vulpes Libris