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Unnecessary Rankings! Rose Macaulay

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Time for some more rankings! Today is a very prolific writer – Rose Macaulay – so I’ve read 12 of her books, but barely dinted the surface. I have a lot more waiting on my shelves, and I’m not including Told By An Idiot, which I have started three times and always given up on… but if there are any other Macaulay novels that I shouldn’t miss, do let me know.

12. Staying With Relations (1930)
A story about going to an archeological dig, what I chiefly remember was being disappointed by how boring it was.

11. I Would Be Private (1937)
An ordinary couple have quintuplets and escape to a Caribbean island to avoid journalistic obsession with them. While apparently based on a real-life family, I question whether having quintuplets would create such unending fervour. The novel is very funny and enjoyably Macaulayish, but is low down the list for having no real sense of central motivation, and for a sizeable amount of racism.

10. Mystery at Geneva (1922)
A vigorous, silly satire of murder mysteries and the League of Nations – I think probably required you to be alive in 1922 to really appreciate what it’s doing, but Macaulay is clearly having fun.

9. Letters
I’ve read four collections of Macaulay’s letters, I think – published in exchanges with her sister, her cousin, and her spiritual advisor (three different people). All very interesting, but not especially memorable.

8. A Casual Commentary (1925)
The sort of light-hearted, ephemeral essay collection that every author was expected to write in the 1920s – good fun, and Macaulay manages to weave in some axes to grind, but it’s clearly not the sort of book she most enjoyed writing (and she does rather satirise the idea in some of her other 1920s books).

7. Personal Pleasures (1935)
A collection of things that Macaulay finds pleasurable – a fun sort of book to keep in the loo. ‘Departure of Visitors’ is a favourite of mine, and it’s a diverting book, but maybe done better by J.B. Priestley.

6. The World My Wilderness (1950)
Macaulay’s final two novels were for a long time her best-known, and find her in more serious, literary tone. As this list shows, I prefer her 1920s exhuberance, but her novel of life immediately post-WW2 is done extremely well. And kudos to her for making up a fake epigraph to borrow her title from.

5. The Towers of Trebizond (1956)
Her final novel often appears on lists of best opening lines: “Take my camel, dear”, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. It is an eccentric, well-crafted novel roaming over Turkey, Jerusalem, and the Soviety Union – a brilliant achievement, which I am ready to admit might be her best novel, but not my favourite.

4. Potterism (1920)
As my top four will show, I think Macaulay was on an extraordinary run in the 1920s. In all of them – including this look at journalism – she combines wit, whimsy, satire and fun into a magical cocktail that is a riot to read while also having searing things to say about contemporary society.

3. Keeping Up Appearances (1928)
In her sights in Keeping Up Appearances are middlebrow vs highbrow debates, class, and what constitutes literary taste. Two unlikely sisters live in different ‘brow’ worlds, and there is an early twist that she carries off brilliantly. Now back in print from the British Library.

2. Crewe Train (1926)
What a marvellous creation Denham is! She has lived entirely away from ‘culture’, and is essentially primitive when it comes to literature, art and society – until she founds herself whisked into the middle of it. And isn’t very impressed. Gloriously funny, and pin-sharp satire.

1. Dangerous Ages (1921)
I was delighted we managed to get Dangerous Ages into the British Library Women Writers series – it’s a bitingly funny, searingly precise look at women across different generations, from 20s to 80s, and the obstacles they face. Some are very 1920s (starting Freudian psychoanalysis simply to get someone to listen) and some feel extremely ahead of their time (a GP re-entering the workforce after years of being a full-time mother). It is all done with Macaulay’s trademark sharp humour, and has so much to say about life for women in the 1920s.

Hush, Gabriel! by Veronica Parker Johns

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I wanted to add a second novel to my #SpinsterSeptember contribution, so went through my shelf of ‘would these make good British Library Women Writers suggestions?’, flicking through them until I saw any indication that they featured spinsters. Since most of the shelf are hardbacks without dustjackets by little-known authors, with minimal info about the titles online, it was mostly a case of keeping an eye out for ‘Miss’.

Well, Hush, Gabriel! (1940) by Veronica Parker Johns is narrated by a self-described ‘respectable spinster’, aged 52, and I was drawn in immediately by the opening paragraph:

I may as well state at the beginning that I am used to being surprised by Clotilda. I was surprised when she was born; somewhat more so than my mother, who had kept the secret from me until the last possible instant. I first became aware of it when Mother, coyly but with determination, refused to come to my graduation exercises at college. When, a few months later, I ceased to be an only child, I found Clotilda surprisingly beautiful, and so she remained, gracefully avoiding the awkward age as I trudged into my late thirties. I was amazed when she married Malcolm Allen, confounded when she moved with him to a quiet, unassuming Virgin Island. Therefore, I scarcely turned a hair when one of her house guests was found, surprisingly to everyone else, murdered.

This is how I learned that I was reading a murder mystery! Agatha (the spinster in question) is visiting her sister ahead of Clotilda’s impending baby. There are a handful of other guests, assembled in a clear ‘one of these is going to be a murderer’ sort of way, with little other reason for them all to come together. It took me a while to disentangle them, as they tend to dart onto the scene and disappear – we have Dolly Woods, a silly, brash woman whom Agatha meets on the journey there, and her older, wealthy husband. There’s likeable Mary and her flirtation with Carl; there’s Clotilda and her fairly absent husband; there’s a local judge, whom Agatha grows swiftly fond of. And there is Agatha’s dog Nell, who has somehow made the journey.

I really enjoyed Parker Johns’ writing from the off. She gives Agatha an ironic turn of phrase and tone of voice that I definitely appreciated – I loved the deft way this paragraph finishes:

I liked Carl, too. He was the only one of the guests I had known before, if you except my shipboard abhorrence of Dolly Woods. He had introduced Clotilda to Malcolm, but I had forgiven him for it long since. Numerous theatre invitations during my winters in town had down down my resistance. When a boy of thirty pays that much attention to a woman scenting fifty, she’s just bound to weaken. Eventually I invited him up to my place in Connecticut for summer weekends, and he not only came but seemed to enjoy himself. It was he who had thrust Nell, my cocker spaniel, upon me, and he had been a loving godfather to her. I was grateful to him for always remembering her birthday and forgetting mine.

The aforementioned murder happens pretty quickly – a doctor is found, shot through the head. The mystery part seems to be pretty short-lived: Clotilda instantly confesses to the murder. This is curiously disregarded by everyone, with the feeling that pregnant women will confess to murder at the drop of the hat because of hormones, or something. But the plot thickens when Agatha establishes that the doctor didn’t die by shooting – he was shot after he was dead.

To be honest, the novel’s very promising opening isn’t lived up to. Parker Johns seems to have put all her stylistic effort into the first chapter or so, and the prose becomes much more plebian as we go on. Agatha remains an interesting character, but without the captivating charm that initially thrusts her on the scene. And, yes, it is novel (especially for 1940) for a 50-something spinster to be given a romantic storyline, and it is satisfying that her romance is also intellectual, rather than abandoning her wisdom on the opportunity for a man. But it doesn’t really make up for the novel’s less able elements.

The main one is structure – it sort of meanders on, but further deaths and crises but it’s hard to be very invested. Alongside that is a lot of padding from characters who seem rather one-note, except for Dolly Woods who makes an extremely unlikely transformation into a very likeable character. The title doesn’t seem to make any sense. We learn that Clotilda says “Hush, Gabriel” at the scene of the murder, and Agatha knows she always said it growing up, but since we already knew from the first chapter that Clotilda was at the scene of the murder, it doesn’t add much.

And then there’s the racism… that’s the key reason that I won’t be rereading (or keeping) this novel. I suppose a 1940 novel set in the Virgin Islands is unlikely to be culturally sensitive, and I wasn’t surprised by the slightly-off depiction of the Black inhabitants – though, on the other hand, pleasantly surprised by one of the characters being a Black doctor, well-respected in his profession. The n-word is used a couple of times, but by a character we are clearly meant to consider awful. BUT – I won’t explain exactly how, in case you ever read this – the solution to the mystery partly involves some horrendous racism. Sigh.

So, I think there is a kernel of something wonderful for Spinster September here – if Agatha had lived up to her initial introduction, she would have been a total delight. And if Veronica Parker Johns has written any novel more consistently and coherently, then I’d be interested to read it – at its best, her writing is wonderful. But, overall, this one ended up being a disappointment.

Are there any good secondhand bookshops left in London?

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I know that’s a bold opening, but a commenter recently asked for suggestions for secondhand bookshops in London, and… I struggled. I would have some eager recommendations a few years ago, but they’ve either closed (e.g. the Slightly Foxed Bookshop) or got significantly worse.

Here’s my run-down of thoughts and places I might still visit but, please, do let me know what you would suggest!

(I am thinking for the average book buyer, not a collector with deep pockets, btw.)

Any Amount of Books
Charing Cross Road is a shadow of its historic self – Any Amount of Books seems to have far fewer books than it used to, and its basement is no longer a wonderland, but it’s still the best one in that area IMO.

Henry Porde Books
Since their move (also on Charing Cross Road), they are much smaller, and don’t have many affordable things. Though they also seem to have politer staff than they used to, so that’s a win.

Notting Hill Books & Comics Exchange
This used to be my absolute favourite, but they’ve also massively downsized – and, on my most recent visit, the back room seemed to have really sunk in quality. I found some gems in the front room, so still worth a visit, but sad to see their decline.

Walden Books, Camden
This is a small but very interesting bookshop – you’ll be in and out in half an hour, but I think the one on the list that gives me greatest hope.

Archive Bookstore, Marylebone
There might be good books in here but, honestly, who would know? I love a disshevelled bookshop, but this looks like someone emptied a truck of books through the window. You can hardly get to any of the shelves, and it’s sad to see.

Hurlingham Books, Fulham
Also very chaotic, but somehow more enjoyably so, and the best customer service I’ve come across. I’d recommend a visit for sure, but it’s not central so you’d have to be going deliberately.

World’s End Books, Chelsea
I went for the first time the other day, and it’s a nice little shop – not much stock on the shelves, a lot very pricey, but well chosen.

Skoob Books
This is central, but I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed by their selection – almost none of the mid-century hardbacks I’m after. If you’re looking for lots of modern paperbacks, then you could be in luck.

Judd Books
That reminds me of Judd Books, and I realise I haven’t been in years. Must rectify!

I can’t think of any others near the centre, but maybe I need to be making special trips to further flung parts of London? Sorry for a post that is a bit negative, but it’s sad to see a great book-buying city become so uninspiring for the average book hunter.

So – please give me hope!

Literary Gardens by Sandra Lawrence

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I’ve really dialled back the number of review books I say yes to (and, let’s be honest, don’t get offered as many as I did in the blogging heyday) – but I couldn’t resist when I was kindly offered a new title from Frances Lincoln publishers. Literary Gardens: The Imaginary Gardens of Writers and Poets by Sandra Lawrence was a lovely concept – and is executed just as beautifully as you’d hope.

The book looks at the gardens created by different authors in their books – particularly those which have a real bearing on the experience of the characters and the imagination of the reader. When I first heard about the book, I thought it might tread very familiar paths – your usual assembly of Austen, Bronte etc, with an eye on the mass market. And, yes, there are some crowd-pleasers in here (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald) – but Lawrence is clearly extremely well-read and very thoughtful in her selection.

Some authors I love that are represented – ‘The Garden Party’ by Katherine Mansfield, Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie, Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim. We have nostalgia catered to, with The Secret Garden, The Tale of Beatrix Potter, and The Chronicles of Narnia – and then there are authors I’ve never read and, in some cases, never before heard of (Vivant Denon, Valmiki, Sei Shōnagon).

Each chapter introduces you to the book in question, talks a little about the plot and reception and, of course, the setting. Lawrence has an easy, friendly way with words – balancing her research with the affability of a fellow-reader. Here are a couple of paragraphs on Hallowe’en Party, for instance:

One of Christie’s last whodunits, the novel was not well-received on publication in 1969. Alongside pace-slowing throwbacks to previous ‘greatest hits’, she, perhaps unwisely, tries to keep up with the times. Her tried-and-tested but quaint by the 1960s style is littered with everything from long-haired beatniks to recreational drugs, the merits of abolishing capital punishment to the dropping of the eleven-plus exam, televions to – shock – lesbians, in the process, it would seem, both alienating her core and irritating any prospective audiences. […] Time has been kinder, however, than the critics, and while not her most tightly plotted mystery, the basic story of Hallowe’en Party is solid.

The action is mainly set at the imaginary Woodleigh Common, 30-40 miles from London near the equally fictional Madchester. The village’s houses are mainly named for trees: The Elms, Apple Trees, Pine Crest. The only exception is a large Victorian pile boasting a strange garden: Quarry House. Poirot is unimpressed. To him the idea of a ‘quarry garden’ is ‘ugly’, suggesting blasted rocks, lorries and roadmaking, all alien to this olde-worlde setting. 

In each chapter, Lawrence widens from the novel or story itself to a broader look at the author – in this one, for example, she looks at Christie’s own home and garden, Greenway. The chapters are short but satisfying. It’s probably more satisfying if you’ve read the book in question, if I’m honest, but I still appreciate Lawrence’s willingness to introduce us to less familiar authors.

This sort of beautifully produced book (not a ‘coffee table book’ in the sense of merely flicking through, but would grace any coffee table) stands or falls on its accompanying visuals – and Lucille Clerc’s illustrations are a wonderful success. They are so sumptuous, inviting you into the imaginary gardens (or, occasionally, appropriately deterring you). She captures the feel of narrative – none of the images feel static, even the ones that don’t have anybody in. Here’s Mr McGregor’s garden from The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, and I defy you not to want to scurry in.

If you google the book, you’ll find a few other examples. I could stare at them for a long time – Clerc resists being fey or whimsical, and even the most fanciful garden illustration has a groundedness to it.

It’s such a good idea for a book, and it is done much better than I could have hoped for. Such a thoughtful selection, and put together wonderfully. I think Literary Gardens would make a lovely present – but I’d equally recommend it for a purchase for yourself.

Project 24: Book 19 (and a special A.A. Milne day out)

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He bought another book! I go to London quite a lot, and I’m very familiar with the secondhand bookshops in the centre of the city. So, gradually, I’m trying to venture out to the ones I’m less likely to stumble across – though, sadly, there are far fewer than there were even a decade ago.

One of the bookshops on my list was World’s End Bookshop in Chelsea (or Chelsea adjacent?), which isn’t exactly off the beaten path, but is off the paths that I tend to beat. Well, imagine my surprise when I happened to walk past it yesterday! I was in the area because I was going to Finborough Theatre to see The Truth About Blayds by A.A. Milne.

(I will get onto the Project 24 purchase, but let’s take an A.A. Milne interval.)

I think it was my friend Jane who alerted me to Finborough Theatre’s production, and I am so grateful she did. It’s a tiny theatre, seating maybe 40-50, and you have to walk through a restaurant to get to it. How they landed on The Truth About Blayds, I don’t know – but I knew I had to go.

As you may know, A.A. Milne was a successful playwright before he wrote Winnie the Pooh, and there is a volume called Three Plays that has arguably his best work – The Dover Road, The Great Broxopp, and The Truth About Blayds. I have loved them for more than 20 years, but I never thought I would get to see them on stage. The tiny Jermyn Theatre put on The Dover Road a few years ago and that was absolutely wonderful – and now I can say the same about The Truth About Blayds.

It’s a play about a revered poet on his 90th birthday. His family are gathered to celebrate him with a special address from a representative of the younger generation of writers (who I think is meant to be in his 40s, but was played by someone in his early 60s). Blayds’ grandchildren are tired of growing up in his shadow, his daughter (also meant to be 47 but…) has long-sufferingly devoted her life to serving his whims, and his other daughter and son-in-law have done the same with less regret and more sycophancy.

At the beginning of the second act, we learn that all is not as it seems…

It is a very funny play, and surprisingly fresh and timely in its examination of authenticity – and how much being authentic might suffer when profit is to be made. The acting was wonderful, with the whole cast on exceptional form. Sometimes bringing across 1920s comedy can feel a bit stilted or stylised, but they did it in a way that felt funny and genuine – and the pathos and moral elements of the play were done beautifully too. Rupert Wickham was the standout for me, as the ‘younger writer’, though I will also rush to see Catherine Cusack (the put-upon daughter) anywhere again. The two, with a secret history between them, share tender, moving, believable scenes – which, again, feel slightly different from how they’re written when the actors are a decade or more older than the roles suggest. William Gaunt, as Blayds the poet, was beautifully characterful. Helpfully, for such a small theatre, no changes of scenery were needed.

As I sat there, I kept feeling wonder that I was getting to see this play I love so much. I never thought it would happen, and I’m so grateful it did. And you can do the same until 4 October, although apparently a lot of performances are sold out. (I did enjoy the woman forcing her way into a front row that clearly didn’t have room, because she couldn’t see the back row – though I can’t mock, as I struggled to find the way to get to the back rows, and the punter I asked wisely ignored me.)

Oh, one lovely coincidence – as I walked to the theatre, I went down a back street and – completely unknowlingly – stumbled across the house where A.A. Milne lived! So many of his early Punch columns are about living there, and it was special to be able to picture the house now.

ANYWAY onto the book! It wasn’t by A.A. Milne, though wouldn’t that have been pleasing. Rather, it was The Flying Fox by Mary McMinnies – with rather a striking dustjacket. I absolutely loved her novel The Visitors, so was delighted to come across her only other novel.

I’m still a little ahead of target (Book 19 should come midway through October), but my birthday is in November and, of course, Christmas is not far ahead – so those are good times to wave lists of book-wants in front of friends and family.

All in all, a really wonderful London day – and I haven’t even talked about the delicious pizza I got at Mucci’s and the ice cream I got a Venchi. Hope you’re having a good weekend, and sorry for slightly intermittent blogging of late!

The House By The Sea by Jon Godden

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My first – and I hope not only – contribution to #SpinsterSeptember! It’s an annual event organised by Nora and is rightly very popular. Because there are so many interesting spinsters in fiction, whether joyful or miserable, deliberate or left on the shelf, adventurer or domestic.

I’ve read a couple of novels by Jon Godden (sister of Rumer Godden), and I thought Told In Winter was especially good – so when my friend Barbara offered me a copy of The House By The Sea (1948), I gratefully took her up on it. The title made me think it would be a cosy story of a beautiful location – and, after all, I had already loved a memoir of the same name by May Sarton.

Well, reader, cosy is not the word for this book.

It does start with slow, coldly beautiful descriptions of the isolated house and its coastal scenery. Edwina is a middle-aged, unmarried woman who has recently moved there, keen to get away from the oppressive friendship of a woman called Madge (though Madge also seems to have a room in this new house). We never meet her, but it’s clear that she has domineered Edwina in the name of protection. It did seem possible that she and Madge had been in a romantic relationship but, if this is the case, Godden only hints at it. It is clear that Edwina is starting to feel free – but it is also clear, even at this stage, that the house is not an uncomplicated idyll.

When Edwina opened the door the hall was full of chalky blue light which came through the staircase window across the white banisters and on to the slate floor. Although she had spent the last three days in the house, unpacking, cleaning, and arranging her furniture, going back across the fields in the evening to her rooms in the village, she now felt as if she were entering the house for the first time. It was, she felt, entirely unaware of her, entirely empty, altogether silent, without life or breath – in spite of the furniture she had arranged, the curtains she had hung, the fire laid ready in the grate, her clothes in the cupboard. She hesitated on the doorstep, almost afraid to go in and break the silence.

Godden’s writing is beautiful, and Edwina is an interesting character. In some ways, she fits some stereotypes of middle-aged, unmarried women in mid-century novels: a certain naivety, a yearning for the domestic. But she is self-aware too, and realises how her life has been lived in the shadow of others. Coming to this new house is a chance, she believes, for transformation.

She thought, “For years I have been filled with Madge and before that there was someone else, who, I can’t remember, and before that another – my father, Jenny my nursemaid. I take on the colour of the person nearest me, just as I have taken on the colour and character of all these clothes in turn. Yes, a change of clothes is enough to change me completely.”

“What shall I do now that I am alone?” she thought. “What shall I become? An empty shell waits for any tide to flow and fill it. That is asking for trouble. That is dangerous.”

One of the things about opening an old hardback you know nothing about, which doesn’t have a dustjacket, means you are entering completely blind. There is no publisher’s blurb to give you clues, or even quotes from other authors to give you a sense of tone. So I did not at all expect the actual trouble and danger that arrive.

Edwina is walking through the empty rooms of her house, as usual, when suddenly she realises there is a man in the kitchen with her. He is hungry, dirty, tired and aggressive. His name is Ross Dennehay, and he quickly takes control of the house.

It is such an unexpected turn for the novel to take, and suddenly the long, slow, perhaps slightly boring, initial 70 pages make sense. We, like Edwina, have been lulled into thinking this is a quiet refuge at the edge of the world. Any unquiet has been in Edwina’s own mind, trying to establish her sense of identity when this has never hitherto been welcomed. And suddenly this scary man appears – threatening violence if he is not obeyed, and effectively keeping her prisoner.

But this shock somehow doesn’t shift the genre of The House By The Sea – it does not become a horror novel, or anything you might expect from the home invasion trope. Instead, Edwina seems to find something that she has missed: a new experience, and new roles. Instead of being the needy one in her friendship with Madge, she becomes cook, housekeeper, companion to Ross. He remains untrusting and angry most of the time, throwing her one kind word for every 20 rebukes, but she doesn’t seem to quashable. Instead, she keeps trying to assure him he can trust her – and there is even a lingering eroticism to the way she behaves.

He isn’t a rough and ready man who is hiding a heart of gold, by any means. In one tense, ruthless scene, he forces Edwina to listen to his story – why he is on the run, and why he ends up there. It involves rape and murder. As I say, this is not a cosy book. The dark edges of Told In Winter are a more present foundation in The House By The Sea.

I almost gave up on The House By The Sea because I was finding it so slow. Even after Ross arrives, Godden doesn’t alter her pace – just the intensity of the narrative. It is still steady, steady, steady – the most langurous thriller you can imagine. Throughout, she makes space for beautiful and evocative descriptions of the natural world around the world, like this:

The wind was up and moving round the house. It came from the sea and with the rain tore inland across the fields, crying and calling as it went. It found the house and beat at the walls and roof and plucked at the windows. The house stood firm. It presented a smooth unbroken surface to the night; the wind streamed like water over and round it and rushed on defeated. In the black spaces of the night the lamplit circle in the sitting-room, where the two armchairs were drawn close to the fire, was an oasis of peace and warmth and strength.

I’m really glad I continued with the book, though I still can’t entirely work out what I thought of it. It has to be read slowly, and it requires a patient reader. Ultimately, I don’t know whether it was a triumph or needed significant restructuring. But I’m sure the characters, the voice, and the feeling of it will stay with me – and that is certainly an achievement. You certainly won’t come across anybody quite like Edwina, or any similar situation, in any other novels this Spinster September.

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend, everyone! I’m off to a wedding – for the past five or six years, I’ve been down to one wedding a year. How did I ever have the energy to go to five or so in a year? Anyway, this one is local and the weather looks good (but not too hot to put on a suit), and there are lots of people I know there – all ingredients for a fantastic day.

Hope you’re having a good one, however you’re spending it. Here’s a book, a blog post, and a link to accompany you through it.

1.) The book – I still haven’t read any Laurie Colwin, but was very tempted by Another Marvelous Thing (though that US spelling of ‘marvellous’ is very hard to take). Indeed, any W&N Essentials book looks irresistible in their striking new packaging, but Colwin stood out as a writer I’ve been meaning to try for a long time.

2.) The blog post – Moira at Clothes in Books has picked the best cosy crime novels.

3.) The link – is there more to say about the Salt Path situ? Yes, it turns out – Polly Aitken is a disabled nature writer who was told her writing was uncommercial if it didn’t include a miracle cure, and she has some very interesting things to say.

Trance by Appointment by Gertrude Trevelyan

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Recovered Books by Boiler House Press continue their admirable work of bringing out G.E. Trevelyan’s novels and sent me Trance By Appointment back in March. I read it in July and I’m finally writing about it – and, gosh, Trevelyan was such a varied writer. That sort of variety might explain why she hasn’t had perhaps the legacy she deserves, since it is hard to describe what sort of writer she is, or what to expect when you open one of her novels.

Trance By Appointment (1939) was Trevelyan’s final novel, and is in many ways the most traditional of the ones I’ve read by her. Two Thousand Million Man-Power is formally interesting, doing rather brilliant things with fluid prose and a sense of diving from the general to specific; William’s Wife has an extraordinary single-mindedness in its focus on one woman’s self-inflicted downfall. And Appius and Virginia is a little experimental in style as well as unusual in topic.

Against that backdrop, Trance By Appointment feels more ordinary in style and topic – though ‘ordinary’ is not a criticism in this case. Jean is certainly living an ordinary life: she is a working-class girl living in London, and that does mean that we have to put up with a little of Trevelyan’s attempts to paint a portrait of everyday, working-class Lond0n life (she even uses “You won’t ‘arf catch it if Mum sees you!”) She is good at this sort of milieu in William’s Wife but a little unconvincing in the outset of this novel.

But try not to let that hold you back – because we see Jean in a fascinating world. Simply to earn a little money, she becomes a sort of apprentice to ‘Madame Eva’ – a kind, canny woman who charges her clients to read palms, tarot cards, or a crystal ball. Her instructions are an interesting mix of showmanship and insight: she takes for granted that their service is inherently charlatan – but she also gives hints of how you can genuinely interpret people’s demeanour and their words to give accurate understandings of their future.

Jean is timid and uncertain, and stumbles her way through the initial readings – never quite understanding that any element of it might be fraud, despite Madame Eva’s best efforts. And then one day…

Jean set out the cards and started off reading them to her, and then, while she was talking, all at once it was as if the cards went big and misty and faded out, and she was looking all along a road that had sunshine at the end of it. She didn’t know any more until she came back the way she did when she was by herself and heard her own voice as if it had been talking. There were the cards still laid out in front of her, but she was sitting back in the chair and she hadn’t moved them from the first layout, hadn’t even turned up the wish.

She was going to do it when the girl got up and took her hand. “Oh, thank you,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “You have helped me such a lot.”

She put down her money and went out, and Jean went and told Madam Eva. She felt all in a daze.

Jean discovers that she has The Gift. She goes into a trance, without any recollection of what took place during it – except it clearly helps people. She then learns that her spirit guide, leading her into this realm, is a young girl called Daisy – the late little sister of Mr Mitch. In introducing us to Mr Mitch, Trevelyan doesn’t show her greatest moment of restrained subtlety: ‘Mr. Mitch was a bit fat, with a white face, and his hair was curly except that he oiled it down, and was starting to go bald on top, he brushed it across.’

Things progress, and Mr Mitch becomes increasingly controlling of Jean – including marrying her, and swiftly showing her little affection. His total disdain towards his offspring is a little exaggerated, perhaps. I’m sure such men exist, but I think he would have been a more interesting character had he been a little less full-throated in his hatred of Jean spending any time with their children, and his total lack of care for Jean’s wellbeing. Sometimes showing us the worst of humanity is, while possible, not paricularly likely.

The reader can see where the novel is going to go, more or less, and we see Jean’s descent into misery – not done as well or as gradually as the descent in William’s Wife, but engaging nonetheless. And there is a revelation in the latter part of the novel that truly shakes Jean’s outlook on her unasked-for talent, as well as asking wider questions about everything we’ve done so far. It was a decision on Trevelyan’s part that certainly made Jean a more compelling character.

Trance By Appointment is a short novel and I think that’s for the best – because, on its own terms and at a reasonable length, it works very well. Lacking the subtlety of character and plot in some of Trevelyan’s other novels, and the ambitious stylistic choices she makes elsewhere, it would have dragged had it been any longer. As it is, I can safely recommend Trance By Appointment as a good read – and, if not a final flourish in a fascinating career, at least a respectable culmination of a writing life that had rather better highlights.

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg

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For my second and final entry to this year’s Women in Translation month, I’ve read The Dry Heart (1947) by Natalia Ginzburg, translated from Italian by Frances Frenaye. I’ve read and loved a handful of the short Ginzburg books that Daunt are diligently republishing, so opened it up with high hopes – and immediately encountered this striking opening paragraph:

“Tell me the truth,” I said.

“What truth?” he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what is was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it and himself leaning out of a window to wave a hankerchief.

I shot him between the eyes.

Gosh! Well, if that doesn’t draw you in, then what will? Most of the novella is then told in flashback, with occasional returns to ‘present day’ and the aftermath of this shooting. It’s not my favourite structure for a novel usually, as I find putting the entire story in flashback often deadens it – but it worked well in The Dry Heart.

As so often, it wasn’t until writing this review that I realised that the narrator is unnamed. (Do others notice this while they’re reading? I never seem to.) She is an emotional, hopeful woman who becomes a little obsessed with an older man she sees at the theatre – a man we later learn is called Alberto. When he’s present, she can’t quite understand why she is so fixated on him: he isn’t especially attractive or charismatic, and seems rather diffident and unwilling to develop anything approaching an emotional connection. But when he isn’t there, the narrator can’t stop picturing their future life together.

Alberto doesn’t try to disguise that he is in love with another woman – but she is married. He has determined on singleness, since he can’t have her, but – with those cards on the table – is willing to propose.

When Alberto asked me to marry him I said yes. I asked him how he expected to live with me if he was in love with somebody else, and he said that if I loved him very much and was very brave we might make out very well together. Plenty of marriages are like that, he said, because it’s very unusual for both partners to love each other the same way. I wanted to know a lot more about his feelings for me, but I couldn’t talk to him for long about anything important because it bored him to try to get to the bottom of things and turn them over and over the way I did. When I began to speak of the woman he loved and to ask if he still went to see her, his eyes dimmed and his voice became tired and faraway and he said that she was a bad woman, that she had caused him a great deal of pain and he didn’t want to be reminded of her.

If you’re not familiar with Ginzburg’s writing, this is a good indication – she writes fairly plain prose, and uses it to crystallise emotions and emotional miscommunication in a simple way. It works very well, getting to the heart (pun not intended) of any scene with the directness of an arrow.

As the story progresses, we already know the ending – and we can guess how we might end up there (and learn pretty soon that, yes, Alberto is having an affair with the woman he’s in love with). But Ginzburg does a couple of more subtle things with this premise. One is the significance of the drawing, and the drawings that Alberto does as the story progresses – and the other is the scene in which the narrator and the woman Alberto loves meet each other. I think that’s the strongest moment in the story, overturning expectations.

Perhaps, also, it’s the scene I found most interesting because of the relationship between the two women: rivals, but both vulnerable, neither getting what they want from the situation or from their lives. And, as a complementary point, the reason I didn’t love The Dry Heart as much as the other Ginzburg novellas I’ve read is a matter of personal taste: I find stories of romantic couples much less interesting than the other sorts of relationships that Ginzburg has centred narratives around, particularly parent/child.

Perhaps that’s because narrative art of the past few centuries has been so obsessed with romantic love that it is refreshing to find somebody (especially somebody of Ginzburg’s talent) turn an equal attention to one of the many other fundamental relationships that make up our lives. So The Dry Heart is doubtless just as good as the other books I’ve read by her – but didn’t captivate me in quite the same way.

Project 24: Books 17 and 18

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Well, we have got ahead of ourselves. But ‘we’ I mean ‘I’. Because the calendar is saying it’s late August, and my Project 24 tally says that September has already ended – I’m up to book 18 in my Project 24 restrictions. But hopefully you’ll see why I couldn’t resist these two beauties.

Last weekend, I went to Stratford-upon-Avon with my brother and some friends to do a treasure hunt. I knew there might also be treasure in Chaucer Head Bookshop, which I hadn’t been to for the best part of a decade and was delighted to discover still existed. They’ve got a nice range of very reasonably priced books – and I came away with these two.

Theresa’s Choice by Rachel Cecil (daughter of David Cecil) seems to be about some sort of love triangle – but, let’s be honest with ourselves, I bought it because I loved the cover. And I’m always willing and ready to try a mid-century woman writer that I don’t know anything about.

Nina by Susan Ertz is the black blob underneath the colourful dustjacket – less captivating on the eye, but more exciting to me since it is SIGNED by her! I’ve only read a couple of Ertz novels, and they’ve been very different from each other, but I’m interested to read more by her – and I think there might be something special among her output. Fingers crossed it’s this one!