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Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Hard to believe it was snowing recently, given how sunny it is as I write this! I’m spending my weekend watching ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ at the cinema, playing board games, and (of course) reading. Hopefully recording another episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ if I manage to finish the enormouslyyyy long book Rachel chose.

I hope you’re having a great weekend – and here’s a book, a link, and a blog post to help you along.

1.) The book – is a reprint of What Not by Rose Macaulay. I’ve had it for years but have yet to read it – must rectify – and now you can get a lovely edition from Handheld Classics. Well, nearly now – it’s coming out at the end of March. (Fun fact: I apparently own more Macaulay books than anybody else on LibraryThing, at 24, though I’ve only read half of those.

2.) The link – British or Irish and want to find out if the NY Times can work out where exactly you’re from? Give it a go!

3.) The blog post – I love Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes – for an interesting and more ambivalent review, check out George’s at Reading 1900-1950.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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What a difference a week makes! No more snow here, and Cornwall already feels a lifetime ago. What a lovely weekend we had there, though. And today I’m off to London to watch a couple of plays – I’ve not done a matinee and an evening performance in the same day before, so hopefully it’ll be fab rather than too much of a good thing.

I hope you’re really well, and I’ll warm those February blues with a book, a link, and a blog post…

1.) The link – I love reading about cover design and the creative process – and this New Yorker article provides.

2.) The book – I don’t buy a lot of cookery books (though I have lots for baking), but I sort of need this halloumi cookbook. Man, I love halloumi.

3.) The blog post – Ali is great on Barbara Comyns in her recent review of Mr Fox – it’ll make you want to read it, I guarantee.

Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing

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One of the books I got for my birthday in 2017, and read quite a while ago but have somehow neglected to write about, was a graphic novel called Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing. I mentioned it in one of my weekend miscellanies, believing that it wasn’t possible to get in this country. Luckily I was wrong, and my friend Barbara kindly selected it – though was a bit surprised when it turned out to be a graphic memoir. I suppose I hadn’t mentioned my recent interest in graphic fiction and non-fiction!

Much like Mrs Gaskell & Me, that I wrote about more recently, this book takes the form of two parallel narratives – one of which looks at the author’s life, one of which looks at… well, the author’s life, but this time the author is not the one writing the book. Both titles put it much more clearly than I’m seeming able to describe! And so one follows Kathleen Beauchamp as she leaves New Zealand and becomes Katherine Mansfield; one follows Sarah Laing as she discovers a love of Mansfield, and how this informs many things in her own life.

As with any graphic book, a lot of the success of the book depends on the artwork. I really responded to Laing’s style, and each page is given suitable care and detail. I’ve read some graphic novels which are clearly done rather hastily, with proper attention only occasionally given – this is absolutely not the case here. It’s a beautiful book. You can see more examples in an interview with her.

And if the parallels between their lives isn’t as illuminating and beautiful as All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth (now my benchmark for pairings that work wonderfully), it does fulfill all that Laing claims for it. She knows they are not the same people, or experiencing the same things – rather, she sees how Mansfield has inspired and changed her, and depicts this delightfully. I’d definitely recommend to any Mansfield fan – and perhaps anybody who’d like to become a Mansfield fan.

 

All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth

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Do you ever read a book that is so perfect for you that you wonder if anybody else will want to read it? While away in Cornwall, I read my review copy of Katharine Smyth’s memoir All The Lives We Ever Lived (2019) – the subtitle of which is ‘Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf’. I’ve used the word ‘memoir’, but it covers more categories than that – biography, philosophy, literary criticism – and it is extraordinarily good. But it does, perhaps, require a love of a Virginia Woolf and a familiarity with To The Lighthouse.

Luckily I have both those things. I’ve read To The Lighthouse three times (far fewer times than Smyth has read it, I should add) and believe it to be one of the greatest books ever written – and quite a few of the books to which I would give that accolade are by Woolf. To me, she is easily the best writer of the 20th century. To Smyth, she is that and more. The solace she is seeking (in that subtitle) relates to the death of her father – a man she idolised – and she uses To The Lighthouse to better understand the role of a parent, and the impact of filial love, and any manner of other things that she draws out of Woolf’s writing.

Much of this book is a portrait of her father. One of the impressive things Smyth achieves is conveying how deeply she loved this man who was evidently, openly flawed. For much of her life, he was an alcoholic – and her descriptions of his glassy-eyed appearances at dinners, his mood swings, his melancholy are vivid and uncomfortable. Despite a few stays in rehab facilities, he refused to go to AA meetings; Smyth’s parents had multiple times where they announced their separation, but stayed together. Smyth not only draws unlikely parallels between this troubled man and the almost saint-like Mrs Ramsay of To The Lighthouse, but makes the reader believe them. She is also keen to point out that her mother is not akin to the frustrating, unthinking cruel Mr Ramsay – but we see the dual portraits: this suffering, patient mother, and the mother that Smyth could not love in the way she loved her father.

People sometimes ask me if I’m angry with my father. When I say I’m not, they think I’m lying to myself. I don’t think I am. When I look back on his worst acts, I can remember my wrath and hatred, certainly – so violent, so complete, so inexorable, I thought at times that I could barely stand to be in my own skin. But I can also remember the way in which, within a week or two, such vehemence had faded to nothing; how that brutish stranger was again and again vanquished by that other, most gentle and lovable being: my father. And the truth us that neither memory – neither the loathing nor the absolution – feels especially familiar now. They feel like stories attached to someone else.

Smyth weaves together the various strands of All The Lives We Ever Lived beautifully, with extremely good judgement. Any time that I wondered why we hadn’t heard from To The Lighthouse for a while, it appeared in the next paragraph. The links she draws between the novel and her experiences are always thoughtful and illuminating, and never feel forced. It’s impact on her life and how she frames her understanding of life is so great that it is natural to take it as a guidebook to the intense experiences of loving and grieving. (Incidentally, having never grieved for anybody close to me, I am always reading books about grief as something of a tourist – fascinated but without truly understanding. I imagine this book would feel very different to somebody who has lost someone.)

I remember when I first started reading Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway, mostly on the school bus. It was a revelation. Language had previously been something that sat around in piles, being clumped together to form books that were buildings of meaning – some architecturally elegant, some more workmanlike, but always simple enough constructions. And now this; now Woolf. She seems to disregard everything that language has previously had to do, and find new, beautiful, extraordinary ways of using it. Unlike other authors I had read, she was not finding words to match her meaning, but giving language new meaning, new vitality, through her ways of using it.

Her writing has not affected how I relate to the world in quite the way it did for Smyth, but I certainly share her admiration for Woolf’s astonishing ability. If I didn’t, or if I had not read To The Lighthouse, I do wonder what I’d have made of All The Lives We Ever Lived. I can’t answer that question. I know that reading this has made me want to pick up To The Lighthouse for the fourth time, and perhaps it would inspire Woolf newbies to do the same.

I’m still not sure why this book was published. Smyth hasn’t written any others, and its audience must be relatively niche. But I’m so, so glad it was. It is beautifully written, movingly thoughtful, and something I feel sure I will return to. Woolf fans – rush to it. For those who aren’t – I hope you find as much to value as I did.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend! I hope you’re not snowed in. I hope, frankly, that I’m not snowed in (since I’m writing this a few days in advance). But I’ve stocked up on cat food, and that’s the important thing. I can always survive on plain pasta, if needed. But man cannot live by pasta alone, so here is a blog post, a link, and a book to complement it.

1.) The blog post – I loved Karen’s parade of her Beverley Nichols books (and coveted a few, of course). Go and enjoy!

2.) The book – I can’t remember where I saw this recommended, but The Reading Promise: 3,218 nights of reading with my father by Alice Ozma is so up my street that I don’t know how I haven’t heard of it. It came out in 2012, and should, by rights, be right here in front of me. But it is not. Yet.

3.) The link – ever wanted to see a painting of a painting of a painting of a painting…? This is an unexpected delight, and proves that corners of the internet are surprisingly lovely.

Sometimes I watch movies

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Yes, I read quite a lot. I spend even more time than that watching television. But I also watch films occasionally, and I thought it would be fun to go through some of the ones I’ve watched in the past month or two, with brief reviews.

The Favourite

It’s been getting good press everywhere, and it’s certainly distinctive. This very odd take on Queen Anne (with the stellar and triple Oscar nominated cast of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz) dispenses with everything you expect from a historical drama. The humour is dark, though nowhere near as dark as the director’s previous, horrendous film The Lobster. Very strange, and worth seeing.

Mary, Queen of Scots

In contrast, this felt much more like a paint-by-numbers historical drama. Saoirse Ronan is predictably brilliant, but the script isn’t amazing and the score is very heavy-handed. Worth seeing for Ronan’s performance (and the great costumes and hair), but the film isn’t particularly special overall.

Love Per Square Foot

I love Bollywood, and this Netflix film is a delight. Two people need to pretend to be a couple to secure an apartment… guess what happens next?! The two leads are very lovable, and the whole thing is great fun. I’ve seen a few people complain at the length (2 hours 15 minutes) but it seemed very short for a Bollywood film!

Three Identical Strangers

This documentary looks at triplets who only discovered each other as adults, having been adopted by three different families. That’s strange enough, but the more the film goes on, the stranger it gets – as you find out how and why they were separated. I have never felt angrier in a cinema. The quality comes from the story rather than the documentary making, which is only really pedestrian, but the story is certainly interesting enough to survive that.

FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

Much less worthy, this looks at the disaster (and criminal fraud) behind the FYRE Festival. I’d never heard of the festival, but it’s an eye-opening look at how the Instagram age can get carried away when nobody really knows how to organise a festival (and don’t mind stealing people’s money on false premises). This was the nicest aftermath of it.

Mary Poppins Returns

Watched this on Boxing Day, and it was absolutely wonderful. A very worthy follow up to the original film, and with much better songs than we could have hoped for. Emily Blunt puts on a posh English voice despite having a posh English voice already, and there is a brilliant cameo from the original Jane.

Source Code

I’m not usually one for thrillers, but Jack Gyllenhaal trying to find out who bombed a train – via some strange science thing that isn’t time travel, but feels like it – is done with the right level of humanity and pace. I like a high concept film that doesn’t linger over explaining that concept.

Tallulah

Another Netflix one, this indie comedy pairs Ellen Page and Allison Janney as they look after a kidnapped baby. Janney can do no wrong, and it’s great to see two such excellent and committed actresses get to some interesting, funny, moving material.

First Man

This is the only film I’ve ever walked out of at the cinema. Stunningly boring.

 

The Hand of Mary Constable by Paul Gallico

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As mentioned previously, when I’ve written about Paul Gallico, he is an extremely versatile novelist. And, indeed, a prolific one. This is great – but does mean you never quite know what you’re going to get if, like me, you try not to read blurbs before you start a book. So, when I picked up The Hand of Mary Constable (1964), I didn’t have much to go on. The cover is just wording, and so my preconceptions of the book were based largely on connotations of the title – and I had assumed it was a ghost story. (I also didn’t realise that it was a sequel to Too Many Ghosts, which I own and have not read, but it turns out that the stories are pretty separate.) And I guess it sort of is, but mostly isn’t.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

The sheet of paper clutched in the hand of a backward twisting arm was being jiggled in front of the face of Alexander Hero, investigator for the Society of Psychical Research of Great Britain, and roused him from the doze into which he had fallen. The air in the B.O.A.C. jet airliner had that stale smell of narrow confines, too long occupied by human beings engaged in eating, drinking and sleeping.

I wonder quite why Gallico thought that a good name for his hero was Hero – it feels a bit like a stopgap name – but here he is. He is handsome, intelligent, and (importantly) simultaneously open to ideas of psychical research and keen to crack down on frauds. I liked that touch. Having a hardened cynic would have been less interesting than somebody who is chiefly motivated by the wish to rule out false options, to discover if psychical contact is possible.

Hero has been called over to America, from England, to investigate something – though he doesn’t know what. When he arrives, and talks to various people in the FBI, he learns that Professor Constable has been inducted into a circle of spiritualists who claim that they have contact with his deceased ten-year-old daughter. Mary Constable – for ’tis she, of the title – has apparently been speaking through the Bessmers, and has left (as proof) a wax cast of her hand. This cast even has her fingerprints on it. Is it genuine contact, or is it connected with a slightly confusing plot line about how Constable has influence over a nuclear deal with the Russians?

The Hand of Mary Constable could probably be considered a literary thriller, and there are certainly bits that pretty thrillery. There are even bits that have a James Bond seduction element to them. Those aren’t genres that I usually rush towards, but the mix of that with Gallico’s intriguingly quirky look at spiritualism made me really enjoy reading this book. He brings the sense of the darkly fantastic that made me love his novel Love of Seven Dolls, and is certainly good at creating scenarios that combine the strange and the pacy.

I shan’t spoil the ending, but it did get a little too drawn out with all explanations – the novel would have been unsatisfying without proper explanations, but I wish he’d found a subtler or more concise way to include it all – but I still think #ProjectNames is off to a good start, and I continue to find Gallico an intriguing and unusual writer.

The Books I Bought in Hay on Wye

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I am trying not to buy books this year, but by the time I’d made that resolution I’d already organised to stay near Hay on Wye for a week. Five friends and I stayed in the beautiful Landmark Trust property Shelwick Court, which is about 40 minutes from the town of secondhand bookshops. Every time I go, there are sadly slightly fewer bookshops – two had closed down since I was there last year – but there are still lots of wonderful places to visit and books to buy. And here’s what I got!

Down the Kitchen Sink by Beverley Nichols
The Moonflower by Beverley Nichols

Every trip seems to mean more Beverley! I hadn’t heard of the second of these, but apparently it’s one of his detective novels. I’m excited to see what he’s like in that mode – my assumption is: fab.

The Passionate Elopement by Compton Mackenzie
The Darkening Green by Compton Mackenzie
Reaped and Bound by Compton Mackenzie

I went to Hay with the intention of stocking up on some more Compton. And I did! I even left quite a few behind – I’m starting to think that I might have been lucky before at picking novels from his funny-novel-period, and he might have been a bit more melodramatic before that. But let’s find out! And the third of these is a collection of essays, even though I have no space on my essays shelves…

The Glory and the Dream by Viola Larkins

I’ve realised that, on book buying trips, I often only buy books by authors I know about – either because I’ve read them before, or by reputation. So I decided to mix it up with at least one book, and was drawn to this one. It seems that I picked somebody truly unknown – this book isn’t mentioned anywhere online, that I can discover, and I have had no luck tracking down info about the author. Here’s hoping it’s a lost gem!

A Cure of Souls by May Sinclair

Always happy to find another Sinclair novel to add to my Sinclair shelves! She was so prolific, and so interesting.

It Gives Me Great Pleasure by Emily Kimbrough

I hadn’t realised that Kimbrough had written so many books, and was pleased to find one of them. I don’t love her solo work as much as I love Cornelia Otis Skinner’s, but it’s still good fun.

Woman of Letters by Phyllis Rose

Some might argue that I don’t need another biography of Virginia Woolf, but to those people I say – did you know that Phyllis Rose wrote one?? I love Rose’s writing, and was really pleased to find this.

Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose

I LIKE PHYLLIS ROSE.

Old Soldiers by Paul Bailey

I’ve only read one Bailey novel, and I see quite a lot of his around in secondhand bookshops. Having looked at quite a few in Hay, this is the one I came home with.

The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

This was the first Welty novel I read, many years ago, but it was a borrowed copy. It seemed about time that I had my own, right?

The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore

I still haven’t actually read The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, but I’m banking so much on liking it that I bought another. This is about a man who dreams a Victorian market and then can’t tell dream from reality – which seems super up my street.

The Best We Can Do by Sybille Bedford

I didn’t expect to find Bedford in a green crime Penguin – this is an account of the trial of John Bodkin Adams, a serial killer. Not the sort of book I’d pick up if Bedford hadn’t written it, but hopefully I’ll be brave enough to read it at some point.

Julian Probert by Susan Ertz

I have two Ertz novels I haven’t read, so fingers crossed I like them and want to read this third! And, I’ll be honest, part of me bought it because I thought the cover was rather lovely in its simple design. (And wasn’t it nice when covers weren’t plastered with generic quotes from people you don’t care about?)

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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I’m off on an unseasonal holiday – yes, I know I’ve just been away for Christmas, but holidays are a lot cheaper in January than at other times of year – so I’ll be back in a week. I’ll leave with a song for a Sunday coming up tomorrow, and the weekend miscellany today. Have a great week!

1.) The book – I saw Eric/Lonesome Reader tweeting about All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth, and it seems almost absurdly up my street. The subtitle is ‘finding solace in Virginia Woolf’, and its a memoir of turning to Woolf’s writing during a difficult grief.

2.) The link – is a little unusual for a book blog. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Bulb before, have I? If you’re in the UK, I recommend them as a potential energy supplier – they’re much cheaper than my previous one AND they use renewable energy. Start the new year with an ethical power decision! And if you use my referral link, we both get £50 off our bills – but they’re great with or without my referral link, promise.

3.) The blog post – a little belatedly – enjoy what is sure to be the most delightfully middlebrow ‘best of 2018’ list you’ll read (and will doubtless have us all off hunting through secondhand bookshops).