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Carey Sharey

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I mentioned a little while ago that I’d bought Edward Carey’s Observatory Mansions and was excited about reading it, after loving his second novel Alva & Irva last year (more here). I’ve included various different cover images throughout this post, interestingly different. Carey has only had two novels published, in 2001 and 2003, so I’m a bit worried that the novelistic pen has dried up. Here’s hoping not, as Carey might just be my favourite living author… which sounds very impressive until you realise how few living authors I like. But still.

Observatory Mansions is every bit as quirky as Alva & Irva. I probably overuse the word ‘quirky’, but no other description will do for Carey’s work. At the centre of this novel is Francis Orme, whose earns his keep working as a living statue. One of those people entirely painted white, who stand on plinths in the park. He wears the white gloves all the time, though, and recoils at the thought of seeing his hands. When the gloves become dusty or dirty, they are removed and carefully kept in a box, his glove diary. And that’s just the start of the surrealism.

Central to Observatory Mansions is ‘The Exhibition’. Francis steals and catalogues objects ‘soley for the reason that they are loved; that their former owner prized them above his or her other possessions.’ This is everything from someone’s false leg to a treasured photograph to love letters. It’s all kept in the cellar, secretly, and Carey includes a list of all 996 objects at the back of the novel.

And of course Observatory Mansions is itself important. An old mansion divided into flats, once isolated and now on a traffic island in a busy highway, very few tenants remain. And they’re all grotesque, from the ex-teacher who cries and sweats 24 hours a day, to the lady so obsessed with television that the soap opera characters are her reality. The novel opens with the unwelcome arrival of a new tenant, Anna Tap – myopic, chain-smoking, woollen-dress-wearing Anna. Francis exerts much of his energy to get her to leave… but she has a life-altering effect on everyone in Observatory Mansions.

Which sounds like a heart-warming fairy tale. Observatory Mansions definitely isn’t that. As a hero, Francis is incredibly selfish, violent, unkind, and antisocial. I did find The Exhibition difficult… unkindness in novels affects me rather. But Carey’s talent lies in presenting the quirky in such a way as the inconceivable sheds some light on reality, and on human foibles. This novel isn’t the achievement that Alva & Irva is – sections in the middle need some editing, there isn’t the undercurrent of empathy which pervades Alva & Irva – but Observatory Mansions remains evidence of a staggering mind, an author of unusual talent whose name ought to be included amongst the significant writers of today. And since his second novel is better than his first, I’m hoping the trend is ongoing, and waiting for that third novel…

Virago Interviews

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One or two of you were interested in finding out who was interviewing whom (or whom who, or something. Colin?) in the Virago book Writing Lives: Conversations Between Women Writers (ed. Mary Chamberlain) which I mentioned yesterday. What am I here for but to oblige? The ‘new’ Virago writers (bearing in mind this was published in 1988) interview the ‘old’ Virago writers – some of these appeared elsewhere, but nevertheless they fit well in with the others. Lots of names I don’t recognise, I confess, but avenues to explore…


Writers in the first column are interviewees; in the second, interviewers.

Maya Angelou – Rosa Guy
Natalya Baranskaya – Pieta Monks
Marjorie Barnard – Zoe Fairbairns
Dora Birtles – Joyce Nicholson
Kathleen Dayus – Mary Chamberlain
Elizabeth Hardwick – Helen McNeil
Dorothy Hewett – Drusilla Modjeska
Yvonne Kapp – Sally Alexander
Molly Keane – Polly Devlin
Mary Lavin – Eavan Boland
Rosamund Lehmann – Janet Watts
Paule Marshall – Mary Helen Washington
Naomi Mitchison – Alison Hennegan
Grace Paley – Cora Kaplan
Angela Rodaway – Carolyn Steedman
Dora Russell – Cathy Porter
Phyllis Shand Allfrey – Polly Pattullo
Mary Stott – Liz Heron
Eudora Welty – Hermione Lee
Rebecca West – Marina Warner

Booking in Bristol

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I spent the weekend with my brother in Bristol – of course I wanted to see him, but I also wanted to go to the Books for Amnesty shop. It has its own website, which is quite impressive for a charity bookshop, and I documented my first visit to it about a year ago. It’s good quality, cheap, quick turnover, and for a good cause. Of the six books I bought there, all had been put on their shelves in the last month (they date them when they put them out) so the shop really does warrant frequent visits. And of course I also bought three books in another shop… these nine came, in total, to £8.40. A success, I think you’ll agree. Keen eyes will spot 12 books in the Recent Acquisitions pile below… two came from the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford, one through the post after being recommended by my friend Barbara-from-Ludlow.

Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury
This is the one Barbara-from-Ludlow recommended, as being in the same sort of area as my dissertation.

English Short Stories of Today – ed. E. J. O’Brien
Includes a story by David Garnett, Edward Sackville-West, Antonia White etc. The ‘Today’ in question is 1934.

The Sandcastle – Iris Murdoch
I keep piling up the Murdochs that I *will* read one day… Someone recommended this to me once, I think.

Summer at the Haven – Katharine Moore
A friend of Joyce Grenfell, wrote some non-fiction (e.g. this on maiden aunts) – this slim novel is about an old people’s home, and is apparently amusing and optimistic. Might make interesting reading alongside Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.

Howards End – EM Forster
Despite not having much luck with his novels so far, I thought I’d persevere. Mostly because of the beautifully inviting cover to this edition. I snapped this up before it even reached the shelves – the shop assistant was putting it out, and I took it from her very hands…


Family Money – Nina Bawden
Not read anything by her yet… but her name has always been on the peripheries of my reading. I’ve had Tortoise by Candlelight forever, though no idea from whence it came.

Family History – Vita Sackville-West
This rang a bell in my mind… I was reminded later that someone was going to send me their spare copy of this. Goops.

The Shutter of Snow – Emily Holmes Coleman
I know nothing about this author, would love to be enlightened. The 1930s novel is about madness, a theme I love reading about… will let you know.

Clash – Ellen Wilkinson
Another author about whom I know nothing, but a £1 Virago ought not be left.

Writing Lives: Conversations Between Women Writers
Newer Virago writers interview older Virago writers – what’s not to like? I can give a full list of authors later, if anybody’s interested?

Among You Taking Notes – The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison
I thought I had other books by her… but apparently not. I always like to have letters or diaries on the go.

Behindlings – Nicola Barker
Sounds quirky and weird, and maybe my cup of tea… at 40p, I thought I could risk it.

Cakes and Houses

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As promised, the recipe for this Chocolate Orange Cake. It’s not the world’s most complicated recipe, but it was rather yummy. Apologies if you’re a seasonsed baker – this may all seem a bit simple. But I thought I’d explain every step thoroughly, just in case baking newbies want to have a go. And if you wait ’til the bottom of today’s post, you can see the joint effort of me and my housemate Mel… never has something aimed at children been compiled with such panache and skill.

I should warn you, before I start, that my baking is never an exact science. As long as you beat well, and have things more or less in ratio, it can’t go far wrong. I’ve tried to make the recipe chatty, but following the bits in bold will work just as well…


Chocolate Orange Cake

– 250g margarine/butter
– 250g golden or normal/white caster sugar
– 230g self-raising flour (we don’t really have cake flour in the UK…)
– 20g cocoa powder
– 3 eggs (medium or large)
– small amount of baking powder
– ditto vanilla essence
– an orange

For the icing:
– icing sugar, butter, cocoa powder… as needed

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5
(sorry, no ‘degrees’ key)

1) Cream together the margarine and the sugar. And mix it quite well. But don’t wear yourself out at this stage. Exert a huge amount of will power not to eat the entire sugary-buttery mixture… seriously, I sometimes put 10g extra of each in, just to compensate for the amount I know that I’ll eat at this stage.

As I said in an earlier post, I always use caster sugar. People more in the know than me assure me that granulated will work equally well but… I’m a sceptic. I use what Our Vicar’s Wife always used.

2) Measure out the s-r flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder. Yes, technically you don’t need baking powder if you’re using self-raising flour – but I find popping a little baking powder in ensures that it’s nice and fluffy. Put it this way, I’ve never had a cake come out overly solid.

A tip… I have put 230g flour and 20g cocoa powder above, but I recommend putting in as much as cocoa powder as looks right, then fill up with the flour until the scales reach 250g. Always better to have too much cocoa powder than too little…

3) Break an egg into a mug, whisk it, add it with a third of the flour/cocoa powder/baking powder mixture. Repeat three times. Doesn’t have to be a mug. You can use one of those endless little glass bowls chefs have on TV, if you like. But doing them in three bouts – rather than all at once – makes it easier to get the additions into thirds. And to fish out bits of broken shell. In between each addition, beat well. But not so flour goes everywhere.

4) Beat it really well. I think this is what separates the fluffy cakes from the doorstops.

5) Add vanilla essence. And now the exciting part. Add the zest and juice of the orange. If, like me, you don’t own a zester, a fine cheese grater works well. But make sure it’s a fine one, not one which will leave chunks of peel in your mixture. Zest/grate all over the orange, straight into the bowl, until the outside of the orange is mostly white. You want to get as much of the zest in as possible. Then chop the orange in half and use a juicer, or just squeeze the orange over the bowl – being careful to remove the pips as they inevitably fall in…

6) Is it the right consistency? Recipe books assume nothing can go wrong… as a seasoned amateur baker, I definitely don’t assume that. The juice of the orange might well have made the mixture too runny – if so, sift some more flour in. Consistencies are really difficult to describe… it should pour slowly into the baking tins. I.e. not liquidy but not stuck to the bowl… it should ‘keep a peak’, as they say of meringue mixtures. But it’s not *so* important if it’s not exactly the right consistency…

7) Put in circular tins. Which I’m sure you’ve already greased and lined with baking paper… Recipes always tell you to do this at the beginning, but I’m sure nobody does. Perhaps I’m just a baking rebel without a cause.

8) Bake for 35-45mins. Because this is quite a large cake, it needs a bit longer in the oven than most. I tend to take it out at about 30mins and poke a knife in it. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. Keep testing like this every five minutes until it is done. Use a fancy baking skewer if you’ve got one.

9) Let it cool, then ice it. I used butter icing for the centre (the rule of thumb is twice as much icing sugar as butter – I used 50g and 100g) and chocolate icing on the top. For that, use more icing sugar than you would have thought possible, sieve it – always sieve icing sugar, actually – and sieve in a tablespoon of cocoa powder. Again, better too much cocoa powder than too little. Nobody likes weak-tasting icing. Add tiny bits of water in increments, mixing well, until the icing is spreadable but not spillontothefloorable. This is usually a matter of trial and error – add some water, add some water, add some water – oh no, too much! – add some icing sugar, add some water…

If you don’t have *that* sweet a tooth, just use the butter icing in the centre, and dust icing sugar over the top, using a sieve. That makes it look very attractive, and saves on dentist bills a tiny bit.

And then hopefully you’re done! A fairly standard sponge cake, but with a few twists, and lots of little foibles which probably aren’t set in stone, but are essential for a true Simon Thomas cake. Do let me know if you have a go – I want to see pictures!

Speaking of which, and destroying any baking credentials I might have had, here is the creation Mel and I made. It’s a self-assembly baking kit, but a little old and thus the pre-made icing had gone a bit, er, funny… At least it’s brought a *little* literature into today’s post, by way of Hansel and Gretel.

Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, and Bess…

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Those with a more encyclopediac knowledge of nursery rhymes than I might automatically finish the blog post title with:

…all went together to find a bird’s nest.
They found a bird’s nest with five eggs in it.
Each took one and left four in it.

I told you I’d get excited about being able to click on the quotation function. This could be a case of Picasa 3 all over again, where I get giddy with excitement for a fortnight, then forget all about it. (It’s just a button I press on the making-a-blog-post screen…)
This is all a long preamble to talking about Shirley Jackon’s The Bird’s Nest (1954). Today’s post might be of more interest to American readers of Stuck-in-a-Book, since there seem to be a lot more copies available Stateside than in old Blighty. I had to read it in the Bodleian. Shirley Jackson is known to me as the author of The Haunting of Hill House (which I wrote about briefly here) and the brilliant We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I’ll write about in October when the new Penguin paperback comes out in the UK. Having been very impressed by these chilling novels – very Gothic, not horror – I was really intrigued to see what Jackson’s pen made of multiple personality disorder. Or dissociative identity disorder, depending upon which guide you use.

For this is the central concept of The Bird’s Nest, which takes its title from that nursery rhyme. The novel starts with Elizabeth – reticent, uncharismatic, a little moody – who is experiencing headaches, insomnia, and occasional black-outs. With the help of Dr. Wright, it quickly becomes apparent that Elizabeth is only one personality amongst many – and the others become increasingly dominant. There is sweet, gentle Beth; feisty, selfish Betsy; airs-and-graces Bess. Much of the novel is from the perspective of Dr. Wright, debating his dealings with these personas, and pondering how to bring them all together into one being. (Lizzie, if you will. Or Elspeth or Eliza or Liz or Betty or Bette… what a versatile name Elizabeth is.) Other chapters are from the perspective of one of the four personalities – but towards the end of the novel these chop and change so quickly that it’s more or less a hotpot of different points of view. A film was made in 1957 (called Lizzie) and I’ve no idea how the actress, Eleanor Parker, managed to portray all these transformations.

And that’s a problem Shirley Jackson encounters occasionally. It’s difficult enough to keep one protagonist consistent throughout a novel – four incarnations must be a nightmare. The most obviously shifting is Beth, who starts as an ideal of Elizabeth, kind and sweet – by the end she weeps at the slightest provocation, and forever moans that nobody likes her. Betsy, contrarily, becomes much more likeable as the novel progresses. But these changes do not materially affect the novel – nor diminish the fact that, though inaccurate, The Bird’s Nest is impressively prescient about multiple personality disorder. The condition was not officially medically recognised until 1980 – this novel was published in 1954. It is a bit fanciful about the interaction of the various personalities, but the patient’s symptoms do match many of those discussed in the Wikipedia article on the subject… so, unless the person who created that article used The Bird’s Nest as their sole source text, I’m quite impressed.

The Bird’s Nest isn’t in the same league as We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The writing isn’t as pacy, the atmosphere not so intense, the characters not so well drawn – but it is still an eerie, involving, and unusual book which doesn’t shame Jackson’s oeuvre. Probably not good enough to bring back into print on its own merits, but as a fascinating example of the beginnings of a genre, and as a novel from a writer showing promise of her later brilliance, I can recommend The Bird’s Nest.

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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This weekend miscellany malarkey seems to have settled into a blog, a book, and a link. Sorry that ‘link’ doesn’t begin with ‘b’, that would have been pleasingly alliterative… any b-synonyms for ‘link’, let me know… Also, I’ve been using this weekend frivolity to try out all the fancy colours which Blogger offers me. I do hope this doesn’t offend any more delicate senses…

Anyway, here goes.

1) This week there are two blog posts I want to point out, as I couldn’t narrow it down to just one. Elaine at Random Jottings writes about Light Relief in the form of PG Wodehouse and Betty Macdonald’s The Egg and I. Like Elaine, I’ve bypassed The Egg and I dozens of times in bookshops, but I know that next time I’ll snap it up. To quote Elaine: And then I turned to The Egg and I another title to join the distinguished list of Books I used to Shelve Regularly when I was a Librarian and turned my nose up at (sorry for the appalling grammar) and recently given to me to read by a friend who said ‘ Cannot believe you have not read these Elaine’. She also was staggered I had not read Mapp and Lucia. I do like to keep my friends on their toes. Oo, I’ve never noticed that ‘quotation’ function before. That’ll come in handy.


The second blog post is this one from Simon at Savidge Reads – mostly I just like the fact that it has pictures of bookshelves. (The one above is actually one of my own, taken last year.) But he also asks from where we inherit our love of books – parents? grandparents? teachers? nowhere? The comments make for fun and interesting reading.

And whilst I’m posting blog links, I happened upon one of my own sketch-based posts which I’d forgotten about, and which made me chuckle… narcissistic, much? It’s from the days when most of my sketches involved my Stuck-in-a-Book self-portrait.

2) Icon Books emailed me a little while ago, wondering if I wanted to review any of their books. Not my usual sort of publisher (they’re non-fiction publishers, for a start) but I looked through their Literature section, and they sent me a couple. I’ve got Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal (any relation of David?) and Nobel Lectures: 20 Years of the Nobel Prize for Literature Lectures edited by John “Did Cruella de Ville Dye Her Hair?” Sutherland. I’ll be interested in the former, though it’s preaching to the converted – but I’m really looking forward to the latter. Just a shame it was published too early for Doris Lessing’s speech.

3) Graduating from university, or simply seeking a new job? I was sent a link to the 50 Books You Should Read Before Entering The Real World – click here – though it has little in common with my own 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. (Speaking of which, it’s ongoing, and in no order, but hasn’t been updated for a while… I’m always open to ideas about obscure books which should make the list). The list has lots of books related to jobs and finances etc, but also a section on Fiction and Memoirs. The only one of those I’ve read is the much-overrated The Catcher in the Rye… but that shouldn’t put me off the rest.

Bowen Out

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Have you ever settled down to a new author, really confident that you’ll enjoy the book in front of you. You’ve heard great things about the author from those whose opinions you respect. You like all the authors to whom this author is compared. It’s the right period, right genre, right topic. And yet… somehow it doesn’t work at all.
That was my experience with Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September.

I’ve read Bowen’s name so often in books about the period, heard it in conversation, always put her down as someone I’ll really enjoy, one day, and then… no. It’s not that I thought the book was *bad* – I could see that the writing was very good – but somehow it was a struggle. Despite being quite a short book, I lost track of who was who (or whom was who, or something) and what was going on. The novel, by the way, is ‘a comedy of manners set in the time of the Irish Troubles.’ It’s set in a big family house, where tennis-parties remain the focus, against the strife and riots. (By the way, the book cover shown isn’t the one I read, but it interested me because it’s the same cover image that Persephone used for their Persephone Classics version of Cheerful Weather For The Wedding by Julia Strachey, blogged about here, not Mariana by Monica Dickens as I wrote before…)

Sometimes I thought I was getting the hang of it. This paragraph is, I think, a great example of Bowen’s writing:

He listened, took off his trench-coat, stepped to the drawing-room door. The five tall windows stood open on rain and the sound of leaves, rain stuttered along the sills, the grey of the mirrors shivered. Polished tables were cold little lakes of light. The smell of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform.

And so it goes on. These moments, I could see that the writing is beautiful… but then I’d get lost and listless again. Perhaps it’s because Bowen’s writing is so often visually descriptive? I can’t ‘see’ things when I read – visual description rarely works for me, unless I concentrate fiercely on it. Hmm.

I was talking to someone at lunch the other day who told me that The Heat of the Day is much better, and that I shouldn’t give up on Elizabeth Bowen yet… can anyone else convince me to persevere? Explain perhaps why I struggled? Or give examples of their own stumbling blocks in books or authors that they fully anticipated loving?

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

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I’ve just spotted, through Juxtabook, that there is a Book Blogger Appreciation Week – who knew? Thought I’d share the link with you: here it is.

Until August 15th you can go along and nominate book blogs in lots of categories, from Best Name For A Blog to Most Eclectic Taste to Most Chatty to simply the book blog you most enjoy. I’m going to have to give it some thought, but I encourage you to go along and make nominations. You can fill every single category with ‘stuck-in-a-book.co.uk’ if you like (or if I pay you enough – c’mon, it would be difficult *not* to nominate me for Best Romance Blog or Most Altruistic Blog, wouldn’t it?) but perhaps, just perhaps, there are other people you think are worthy!

Once nominations are sorted out, and panelists have adjudicated, shortlists will be open for voting. They’re out on September 7th, and voting continues until September 12th. But for now – go and get nominating! Let’s get some UK book blogs represented there, guys.

Recent Purchases

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Time to keep you up to date with the books flooding into my house. These are all ones I’ve bought myself, rather than review copies, and they’re quite a mixture.


The bookshop which featured in Stuck-in-a-Book’s Oxford tour in June 2007, Waterfield’s, is closing this September. It’s been there all through my time in Oxford – indeed, it’s been there for eleven years, and in Oxford for three times that – but sadly is closing its doors. I must say the stock hasn’t changed much in the five years I’ve known it, but I pop in for a browse now and then. You never know when authors you’ve scanned over a dozen times will suddenly ring a buying bell. Anyway, they currently have a closing down sale, and so I went to see what I could find… which resulted in:

Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of L.M. – which is by ‘L.M.’, real name Ida Baker. I only know of this figure from Mansfield biographical material; she was a desperately loyal friend whom Katherine Mansfield seems to have treated shamefully. I’ve got a feeling this will be at bit nauseatingly worshipping of KM… but I’m nauseatingly worshipful of her writing, so perhaps I shan’t notice.

For Sylvia – Valentine Ackland – Sylvia Townsend Warner’s companion/lover/friend. I’ve only just realised how similar these two books are…

By Way of Introduction – AA Milne – I do already have this, but it was quite cheap… It’s a collection of AA Milne’s later essays, mostly introductions to his own and others’ works.

It’s always worth popping into Oxford’s ludicrously good value £2 shop. Everything £2 each, and it’s not jam-packed with tatty remainders and celebrity ‘auto’biographies, but actually really good quality stuff. Especially good on biography, but also lots of fiction, art, politics, history, poetry etc. etc. And fast turnover. I rarely come away empty handed, and last week was no exception…

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro – this was fortuitous, because my book group is reading this novel this month. My first Ishiguro, and I’m looking forward to it.

Where Three Roads Meet – Sally Vickers – I’ve still never read anything by Vickers, despite now having three of her novels. This is such a beautiful hardback copy, and it’s about Freud, so I was sold.

The Folded Leaf – William Maxwell – this was definitely serendipitous, as I went hoping to find some Maxwell…

… and I’ve gone a bit of a Maxwell spree over the past week, whilst thinking about my post for yesterday on They Came Like Swallows. I’ve also bought The Chateaux and So Long, See You Tomorrow. Very excited about The Chateaux – it sounds mysterious and intriguing, though it is looooong. For me.

Just one more to finish off the list: The World My Wilderness – Rose Macaulay was going cheap in Oxfam, so I thought… why not?

Thoughts very welcome, everyone! Ones you’ve read, ones you want to read..?
Oh, and cake recipe coming soon. It was very simple, not really any surprises, but it’s also delicious… so I’ll be sharing before too long.

Baking and Bill Maxwell

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I’ll warn you at the beginning – this blog post does have some bookish bits, but you have to get through quite a lot on baking first. Not to be read if a) you loathe baking, or b) you’re on a diet…

A happy afternoon has been spent baking – Mel and I discovered that we had seven types of sugar in the house, and decided to put them all in some carrot cake muffins. Seven types of sugar, you ask (and the more literary-theory-obsessed amongst you may make mention of Seven Types of Ambiguity) – since I am never one to turn down a sugar-based question, I’ll list them. Caster sugar, golden caster sugar, granulated sugar, soft dark brown sugar, soft light brown sugar, muscovado sugar, icing sugar. The resultant carrot cake muffins are pretty delicious, though I says it as shouldn’t.


I use sultanas with the carrots, rather than walnuts or almonds as some recipes suggest – and added in some cinammon. Oh, and I rather distrust any icing made of cheese, so I sprinkled muscovado sugar on them about two-thirds of the way through baking, to give an extra crunchy topping when they came out. (By the way, the main sugar in them is soft light brown – the other six were added in small amounts, just for fun).

Oh, and I also made a chocolate orange sponge cake, which is very sweet and very nice. This isn’t Stuck-in-a-Baking-Tin, I know, but if anybody would like recipes, I’d be happy to include them soon…


This was all inspired by Darlene’s foray into baking, which she documented here. Do go and read the comments (which do include a very lengthy one from me, I must confess) as the blogging baking community is quite good with tips. Though like most eager bakers, there are some fairly arbitrary rules which I stick by, regardless of advice. (Does anybody know the difference in taste achieved by caster or granulated in a sponge cake? Is there any? I refuse to use granulated, but based on nothing but whim and prejudice.)

Right. And onto books… They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell was the third title selected in the Cornflower Book Group over at Cornflower Books. Sadly, since I’m already in four other book groups, I’ve not been able to join in with this one online – but They Came Like Swallows sounded absolutely wonderful when I read this introductory post, not least because it was under 200pp long. Karen very kindly gave me a copy of it, and eventually I was able to read the novel, whilst in Devon with my brother. And it is quite, quite brilliant.

My copy is at home, so I’m going to have to rely on my memory and all these wonderful comments from the Cornflower Book Group (including some pretty big spoilers, but then the book is more about writing than plot). In fact, I’ll keep it quick, because you can just as easily follow the links above and read their more erudite thoughts(!) The novel is divided into three sections – the two sons and the husband of Elizabeth, the silent centre of the book. Bunny starts off – a very nervous, anxious child, bullied by his brother and scared of his father, who just wants to be left alone with his homemade village. His love for Elizabeth burns through his every action, as does the isolation he feels in every other relationship. But Maxwell writes very cleverly – by the time we get to the sections from the perspectives of Bunny’s brother Robert, and father James, we realise that Bunny’s perspective is skewed. Not wrong, but very subjective. Three competing viewpoints coalesce into one brilliantly delicate novel – the various relationships between family members are all laced with misunderstandings, misconstruings, misapprehensions… all so realistic and uncomfortably possible.

Maxwell (and here is the bold statement) may be the best plain stylist I’ve ever read. Writers like Woolf are better at the detailed, mosaic, entangled writing. Austen is better at the balanced sentence; Wilde better at the epigram – but Maxwell perfects that type of writing that seems style-less but must actually take endless work. It flows perfectly – depths and minutiae of emotions are included without being obtrusive. The subtlety is in these familial depictions, not in the way the story moves – which is only a vehicle for Maxwell’s greater art. They Came Like Swallows has some pretty big plot moments, but the novel is much more about the interaction of a family – and that ambiguous, absent voice of Elizabeth ringing through every page.